Ghanaian, woman held for spying

Press, 13 July 1985, Page 10

Ghanaian, woman held for spying

NZPA-Reuter Washington The nephew of the Ghanaian leader, Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, and a nine-year Central Intelligence Agency employee said by American officials to be his lover, have been arrested on charges of spying for the West African nation. It is the latest in a series of espionage cases that have embarrassed the United States in recent years. The officials said yesterday that Sharon Scranage, aged 29, a C.I.A. clerk, who worked until May in Ghana’s capital, Accra, had become the lover of Flight Lieutenant Rawlings’s nephew, Michael Agbotui Soussoudis. They said that she had begun passing him sensitive information in December, 1983. Scranage was arrested yesterday and Soussoudis, aged 39, was apprehended on Thursday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said. After F. 8.1. agents had begun interrogating Scranage last week she had agreed to help them trap Soussoudis by arranging a meeting at a hotel in suburban Springfield, Virginia, officials said. When he arrived at the hotel to meet her he was arrested, they said. Scranage was taken into custody in Alexandria, Virginia, near Washington, yesterday. Both are being held in jail pending bail hearings next week. The maximum penalty they could face is life in prison. In an Alexandria court hearing yesterday Sous-

soudis said that he was a relative of Flight Lieutenant Rawlings, who took control of Ghana in a military coup in 1981. Soussoudis said that he was not working for the Government of Ghana. But a Federal complaint filed against him in court said that he had passed

damaging information provided by Scranage to Ghana’s Intelligence service over an 18-month period and had told her that he was doing so. The sources said that beginning in December, 1983, and continuing until Thursday Scranage had turned

over to Soussoudis such information as: ® The identities of all C.I.A. personnel in Ghana, including the station chief. ® The identities of Ghanaians who were cooperating with the C.I.A. including some who had turned over classified

Ghanaian Government documents. ® Operational plans for C.I.A. spying in Ghana. The sources said that some C.I.A. personnel had had to be recalled from Ghana after their identities were compromised.