adminCrime Reporter
POLICE yesterday said that they only questioned British journalist Jan Raath on Wednesday and recorded a statement from him as a witness in a case of a story published last week insinuating that Zimbabwe had signed a uranium export deal with Iran.
They said Raath had not been arrested with regards to the matter as reported by some sections of the private press.
Police last weekend launched a hunt for British journalists Jerome Starkey and Jan Raath for spreading falsehoods that Zimbabwe signed a secret deal to export uranium to Iran for the manufacture of “a nuclear weapon”.
But police sources yesterday said Raath was a witness to the case and they were keen to question Starkey who is reported to have fled to the United Kingdom.
“Raath gave a statement as a witness to the case and was never arrested,” said a police source.
“We are still investigating the case,” said the source.
In a story published under a headline: “Mugabe signs secret deal to sell uranium to Tehran” in British newspaper The Times and picked by numerous news agencies, Starkey and Raath alleged the Government undertook to supply Iran with raw materials for nuclear weapon production in breach of international sanctions.
Quoting Mines and Mining Development Deputy Minister Gift Chimanikire, the two journalists, who co-authored the article with Michael Evans and Hugh Tomlinson, also wrote that a Memorandum of Understanding was signed last year to facilitate the exports.
The article could undermine Zimbabwe’s foreign relations.
The United States and the European Union imposed sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme citing fears that Tehran intended to make a bomb.
Iranian authorities have since made it clear that the programme sought to harness energy.
Online Reporter