barfly
02-03-06, 13:09
Soviet Union ordered Pope shooting-Italy commission
By Philip Pullella
ROME, March 2 (Reuters) - Leaders of the former Soviet Union were behind the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in 1981, an Italian parliamentary investigative commission said in a report.
A final draft of the report, which is due to be presented to parliament later this month, was made available to Reuters on Thursday by the commission president, Senator Paolo Guzzanti.
"This commission believes, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the leadership of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate Pope John Paul," the report said.
"They relayed this decision to the military secret services for them to take on all necessary operations to commit a crime of unique gravity, without parallel in modern times," it said.
A 30-page chapter on the assassination attempt was included in a wider report by parliament's Mitrokhin Commission, which probed the revelations of Vasili Mitrokhin, a senior Soviet archivist during the Cold War who defected to Britain in 1992.
The Pope was shot in St Peter's Square on May 13, 1981 by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca, who was arrested minutes later and convicted of attempted murder.
At the time of the shooting, events in the Pope's Polish homeland were starting a domino effect which was eventually to lead to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989.
The Pope was a staunch supporter of Poland's Solidarity union and most historians agree he had a vital role in events that led to the formation of the East Bloc's first freely elected government and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
At a trial in 1986, prosecutors failed to prove charges that Bulgarian secret services had hired Agca to kill the Pope on behalf of the Soviet Union.
BULGARIAN CONNECTION
The so-called "Bulgarian Connection" trial ended with an acquittal for "lack of sufficient evidence" of three Turks and three Bulgarians charged with conspiring with Agca.
But the verdict, a quirk of the Italian judicial system, fell short of a full acquittal. It meant the jury was not fully convinced of the defendants' innocence but that there was not enough evidence for a guilty verdict.
Guzzanti, a senator in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, said the commission decided to re-open the report's chapter on the assassination attempt last year after the Pope wrote about it in his last book before dying.
In that book, the Pope wrote that he was convinced the shooting was not Agca's initiative and that "someone else mastermined it and someone else commissioned it".
Guzzanti told Reuters his commission heard testimony from investigators in Italy and elsewhere who had probed both the assassination attempt as well as other politically related crimes in Europe during the Cold War.
He said the commission had photographic evidence that Sergei Antonov, a Bulgarian cleared of conspiracy at the 1986 trial, was in St Peter's Square with Agca when the Pope was shot.
"We gave the pictures to two independent experts who analysed them with computers and both concluded that the man was Antonov who had claimed to be in his office at the time," Guzzanti said.
The photos are not new. They first emerged in the 1980s but lawyers for Antonov said at the time the man looking on as the Pope was shot was a tourist who resembled him.
Best wel sjokking dat de communisten een paus wilden laten omleggen.
By Philip Pullella
ROME, March 2 (Reuters) - Leaders of the former Soviet Union were behind the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in 1981, an Italian parliamentary investigative commission said in a report.
A final draft of the report, which is due to be presented to parliament later this month, was made available to Reuters on Thursday by the commission president, Senator Paolo Guzzanti.
"This commission believes, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the leadership of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate Pope John Paul," the report said.
"They relayed this decision to the military secret services for them to take on all necessary operations to commit a crime of unique gravity, without parallel in modern times," it said.
A 30-page chapter on the assassination attempt was included in a wider report by parliament's Mitrokhin Commission, which probed the revelations of Vasili Mitrokhin, a senior Soviet archivist during the Cold War who defected to Britain in 1992.
The Pope was shot in St Peter's Square on May 13, 1981 by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca, who was arrested minutes later and convicted of attempted murder.
At the time of the shooting, events in the Pope's Polish homeland were starting a domino effect which was eventually to lead to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989.
The Pope was a staunch supporter of Poland's Solidarity union and most historians agree he had a vital role in events that led to the formation of the East Bloc's first freely elected government and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
At a trial in 1986, prosecutors failed to prove charges that Bulgarian secret services had hired Agca to kill the Pope on behalf of the Soviet Union.
BULGARIAN CONNECTION
The so-called "Bulgarian Connection" trial ended with an acquittal for "lack of sufficient evidence" of three Turks and three Bulgarians charged with conspiring with Agca.
But the verdict, a quirk of the Italian judicial system, fell short of a full acquittal. It meant the jury was not fully convinced of the defendants' innocence but that there was not enough evidence for a guilty verdict.
Guzzanti, a senator in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, said the commission decided to re-open the report's chapter on the assassination attempt last year after the Pope wrote about it in his last book before dying.
In that book, the Pope wrote that he was convinced the shooting was not Agca's initiative and that "someone else mastermined it and someone else commissioned it".
Guzzanti told Reuters his commission heard testimony from investigators in Italy and elsewhere who had probed both the assassination attempt as well as other politically related crimes in Europe during the Cold War.
He said the commission had photographic evidence that Sergei Antonov, a Bulgarian cleared of conspiracy at the 1986 trial, was in St Peter's Square with Agca when the Pope was shot.
"We gave the pictures to two independent experts who analysed them with computers and both concluded that the man was Antonov who had claimed to be in his office at the time," Guzzanti said.
The photos are not new. They first emerged in the 1980s but lawyers for Antonov said at the time the man looking on as the Pope was shot was a tourist who resembled him.
Best wel sjokking dat de communisten een paus wilden laten omleggen.