body-container-line-1
27.02.2001 General News

Soussoudis goes to Jak's with hidden gun

27.02.2001 LISTEN
By Ghanaian Chronicle

In What may have been a major security nightmare, Police guarding the President's house retrieved a revolver hidden on the body of Mr. Michael Soussoudis right inside the house of President J.A. Kufuor's private airport residence, Accra .

He was accompanying Mr. Kofi Wayo, the popular political gadfly who happens to be a loyal and close friend of the notorious cousin and very intimate partner of the former President Flt. Lt. J.J Rawlings.

This was barely 48 hours after Mr. Soussoudis's house had been searched and a significant horde of arms and ammunition found and retrieved days after the authorities amnesty for unlicensed weapons and arms had expired.

He had been bailed a day earlier after the police took him in for questioning.

Mr. Soussoudis turned up yesterday morning before 9.30 am at the residence of JAK and was allowed to go through the posse of Policemen at the entrance and actually parked his car inside the JAK's compound.

When the name of the swashbuckling 'Chucks' was announced he was waved in after he was ordered to park outside of the inner perimeter.

The President already had visitors waiting on him. Chronicle has gathered that that the number of cars and visitors had never dwindled since December 30, 2000.

All sorts of characters, tale bearers, former friends, NDC patrons, lobbyists, pastors, wizards, sleazebags, necromancers, opportunists have been laying in wait to catch his eyes and attention.

And he has generally been welcoming them until his staff issued a directive that, his office which has also been the scene of similar stake-outs should be spared the numerous 'congratulatory visits'.

On this occasion one instinctive policeman quickly followed the duo and politely asked to be allowed to body search Soussoudis.

Within seconds, the cop felt the cold steel of the revolver neatly tucked away and hidden on his body.

He was politely taken out and taken straight to the Police.

By the time Chronicle intelligence picked the signals and sped to the scene, he had been driven off, but the Police on duty confirmed the story and told The Chronicle that their superior officers at the head office were dealing with the matter.

Mother Theresa Aba Kufuor, the wife of the President said she was alright but admitted the incident was harrowing even though she did not witness it personally. She was upstairs when it happened and could not give any first hand account.

By close of business yesterday the exact location of Mr. Soussoudis could not be found as Police headquarters staff were not holding him in their cells, but it is likely that he would be charged tomorrow for the offence.

Cynics say that he may have had an intention to shoot the President since it was unimaginable that he would go to the house barely a day after the Police retrieved such relatively vast quantity of weapons in his possession andthink the police would be deluded into believing that he had turned in everything.

'This country cannot afford a Presidential fatality and this is too serious a matter to let slide.'

In 1992, the gun-loving Soussoudis kept several tonnes of heavy duty weapons enough to destabilise a small country in his house.

When the police raided his house and seized them, he was never charged, but that record is public knowledge.

There is no known record however that he had ever used a gun against any body.

Mike is a generally fun-loving individual with undying loyalty to President Rawlings but an undiminished disdain and hatred for his wife, the former First Lady Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings who stopped him because she suspected that he was introducing her husband to women.

Mr. Wayo could not be reached for his reaction. It is likely that he may have been shocked.

His relation and undying friendship for Mike goes back to the early 70s when he said Mike used to feed him on chicken wings in New York when he met him at a piss joint in the Big Apple.

body-container-line