American arrested in Russia

Press, 15 June 1978, Page 8

American arrested in Russia

NZPA-Reuter Washington The United States has protested to the Soviet Union about the actions of the police who arrested an American businessman in Moscow yesterday, the State Department has said. A department spokesman said that a protest Note had been handed to the Soviet Foreign Ministry after the arrest of the businessman, Francis Jay Crawford of the International Harvester

Company. Mr Crawford was detained by the police as he was driving in central Moscow with his fiancee, Virginia Olbrish, a secretary at the American Embassy, who said he was hauled out of the car as it waited at traffic lights. The United States Embassy in Moscow was informed that Mr Crawford had been arrested for violating article 78 of the Soviet criminal code, which covers illegal currency dealings and smuggling. The arrest came hours after a disclosure in the Soviet Government newspaper, “Izvestia,” that an American woman working at the United States Embassy had been ordered out of the country last July. It said she had been caught leaving espionage materials near a Moscow bridge. Administration officials have been quoted in American press reports as saying that Mrs Martha Peterson, a 33-year-old Indo-.China war widow, was an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency who had used the United States Embassy in Moscow as a cover. The “Izvestia” report and the arrest of Mr Crawford appeared to be linked with the arrest in New Jersey recently of two Soviet employees at the United Nations who have been charged with spying.