GREY TO RECOUNT FULL STORY

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32118, 14 October 1969, Page 17

GREY TO RECOUNT FULL STORY

(N.Z.P.A -Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, Oct. 13. Mr Anthony Grey, the Reuter correspondent, home from China yesterday, told friends that he would, when he felt strong enough, relate the full story of his 26-month detention in Peking. The 31-year-old reporter, who received a boisterous reception from his press colleagues when he arrived at London Airport, said that one of the things that kept him going was his determination to remember every detail of what happened to him so that he could eventually tell it to the outside world. Reliable sources said that the treatment of Mr Grey appeared to have been more harsh and vindictive than had been at first imagined. Mr Grey was kept under house arrest in Peking for 26 months. He was freed on October 4, after the release from a Hong Kong prison of the last of 13 Chinese news workers gaoled in connection with the 1967 riots in the colony. “Low Many Times”

At a short airport press conference Mr Grey, looking pale but alert, said that he was feeling well despite his ordeal but admitted, when answering questions, that he felt very low many times during his detention. “But 1 didn’t despair,” he said. Mr Grey was reunited with his mother, Mrs Agnes Grey, at a London hotel where he is staying temporarily. Later .yesterday he went for a 40-minute stroll round the capital with his sister, Mrs June Carter, and girlfriend. Miss Shirley McGuinn. Another British journalist, Mr Norman Barrymaine, who was released on Saturday after 19 months in a Shanghai gaol today strongly denied that he was also a freelance spy as well as a freelance journalist. “I am not a spy. I have al-

ways been a newspaper man,” he told a crowded press conference.

Any newspaperman who went to China was regarded as a spy by the Chinese, he said. JF.O. Connections Reporters closely questioned Mr Barrymaine, aged 69, about his connections with the British Foreign Office. He said that he worked for the Foreign Office from 1950 to 1954 after being diplomatic correspondent for British newspapers.

Mr Barrymaine said that if a Foreign Office official or anyone else had asked him his views on the situation in China after he had been there he would have told them “as a patriotic citizen.” But this did not make him a spy, he said. Smartly dressed in a blue suit—“l have a reputation for being a well-dressed reporter”—Mr Barrymaine told reporters the Chinese interrogated him for several days after they took him off a Polish ship in Shanghai on February 23 last year. He was finally charged with espionage, but not tried. The Chinese did not charge him with any specific act of espionage, he said. He signed several million words of confession, but he said he used the word "confession” in the Communist sense.

“This is a confession,” he said, referring to the press conference.

Denying that he was in any way employed by the British Government, Mr Barrymaine told the press conference that he was sure the Chinese believed he worked for the Foreign Office and mentioned this in their interrogation.

“I indoctrinated them a pretty good bit," he said about his imprisonment. He said that he told the Chinese their New China News Agency employees in London could walk about doing exactly what he was doing in Shanghai and the British Government “wouldn't give a damn.” The Chinese listened pati-

ently to him for quite long periods, he said. Mr Barrymaine said that he went to Shanghai, which he had previously visited in November, 1967, after being in North Korea to do a story on the Pueblo affair. He took a lot of photographs in Shanghai but they were all taken in the presence of a China travel service guide. “He said I was free to photograph what I liked in the city,” he said? Although the Chinese did not accuse him of any specific act of espionage, Mr Barrymaine said they told him he was guilty of spying because he took photographs and because of his general inquiries. Answering reporters’ questions, Mr Barrymaine said he didn’t hate the Chinese for what they had done to him. “I very much like the Chinese fate. I have always got on well with Chinese,” he said. “Chinese Like Me” “Chinese like me. I find it difficult—impossible—to be resentful against the Chinese.” Mr Barrymaine. a short dapper man with a moustache, said he found he was talking to himself after a few days in gaol so he decided he would “go round the bend” unless he talked to someone else. He “talked” to his daughter, who lives in Westcliff. on-Sea, England, and other friends. But he found that the best » thing of all was to dictate news stories to a “Miss Jones.”

After doing this for half an . hour he felt better Mr Barrymaine, who ln«t 401 b during his’ ricall’y S assaulted 5 “ eVer Phy ’ pletely unjustified i n ing him, Mr Barrymaine re. Plied: “I think f rom thej point of view they were not I unjustified.” not I