1981 Pope John Paul II assassination attempt

An attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II occurred on May 13, 1981. Mehmet Ali Ağca shot and seriously wounded the Pope in the Vatican City's St. Peter's Square. Ağca was convicted for this crime in July 1981, and was deported to Turkey in 2001, after serving 20 years imprisonment.

Attempted assassination of the Pope

Beginning in August 1980 Ağca began criss-crossing the Mediterranean region, changing passports and identities, perhaps to hide his point of origin in Sofia, Bulgaria. He entered Rome on May 10, 1981, coming by train from Milan.

According to Ağca's later testimony, he met with three accomplices in Rome, one a fellow Turk and two Bulgarians, with operation being commanded by Zilo Vassilev, the Bulgarian military attaché in Italy. He said that he was assigned this mission by Turkish mafioso Bechir Celenk in Bulgaria. "Le Monde diplomatique", however, has alleged that the assassination attempt was organized by Abdullah Çatlı "in exchange for the sum of 3 million marks", paid by Bechir Celenk to the Grey Wolves. [http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/1997/03/LEE/8019.html "Les liaisons dangereuses de la police turque"] , in "Le Monde diplomatique", March 1997 fr icon ]

According to Ağca, the plan was for him and the back-up gunman Oral Çelik to open fire in St. Peter's Square and escape to the Bulgarian embassy under the cover of the panic generated by a small explosion. On May 13 they sat in the square, writing postcards waiting for the Pope to arrive. When the Pope passed, Ağca fired several shots and critically wounded him, but was grabbed by a nun and several other spectators and prevented from finishing the assassination or escaping. Four bullets hit John Paul II, two of them lodging in his lower intestine, the others hitting his left hand and right arm. Two bystanders were also hit by stray assassin's bullets; Ann Odre, of Buffalo, New York, was struck in the chest while Rose Hill, of Jamaica, was slightly wounded in the arm. Çelik panicked and fled without setting off his bomb or opening fire.

Prison time, release, and rearrest

Ağca was sentenced, in July 1981, to life imprisonment in Italy for the assassination attempt, but was pardoned by president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi in June 2000 at the Pope's request. He was then extradited to Turkey, where he was imprisoned for the 1979 murder of left-wing journalist Abdi İpekçi and two bank raids carried out in the 1970s. Despite a plea for early release in November 2004, a Turkish court announced that he would not be eligible for release until 2010. Nonetheless he was released on parole on January 12 2006. [ "Turkey pope gunman", January 12 2006, "Yahoo News".] [ cite news | title= "Tried to kill Pope in 1981, Turk released from jail on unrelated charge" | date=January 8 2006|publisher=CBC News | url=http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/01/08/pope-gunman060108.html ] However, on January 20, 2006, the Turkish Supreme Court ruled that his time served in Italy could not be deducted from his Turkish sentence and he was returned to jail. ref label|Reuters|2|a

Relationship with Pope John Paul

Following the shooting, Pope John Paul II asked people to "pray for my brother (Ağca), whom I have sincerely forgiven." In 1983, he and Ağca met and spoke privately at the prison where Ağca was being held. The Pope was also in touch with Ağca's family over the years, meeting his mother in 1987 and his brother a decade later.

Although Ağca had been quoted as saying that "to me [the Pope] was the incarnation of all that is capitalism", and attempting to murder him, Ağca developed a friendship with the pontiff. In early February 2005, during the Pope's illness, Ağca sent a letter to the Pope wishing him well and also warning him that the world would end soon.

Motivations for the assassination attempt

Several theories exist concerning Mehmet Ali Agca's assassination attempt. One, strongly advocated since the early 1980s by Michael Ledeen among others, is that the assassination attempt had originated from Moscow and that the KGB instructed the Bulgarian and East German secret services to carry out the mission. The Bulgarian Secret Service was allegedly instructed by the KGB to assassinate the Pope because of his support of Poland's Solidarity movement, seeing it as one of the most significant threats to Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe.

Ağca himself has given multiple conflicting statements on the assassination at different times. Attorney Antonio Marini stated: "Ağca has manipulated all of us, telling hundreds of lies, continually changing versions, forcing us to open tens of different investigations". [ 'Ali Agça revient à la liberté avec ses secrets', January 12 2006, Libération (see [http://press.jrc.it/NewsExplorer/clusteredition/fr/20060110,Liberation-9042b199be1f6c21f39cd707d2fc2832.html here] fr icon ] Originally Ağca claimed to be a member of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), but they denied any ties to him.

The "Bulgarian Connection"

Then KGB Director Yuri Andropov, was convinced that the Pope John Paul II’s election was the product of an Anglo-German conspiracy orchestrated by Zbigniew Brzezinski to undermine Soviet hegemony in largely Catholic Poland and ultimately to precipitate the collapse of the entire Soviet Union. The Pope’s announcement of a pilgrimage to Warsaw fueled Andropov’s apprehension, with Andropov issuing a secret memorandum to Soviet schoolteachers: David Remnick. [http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/050411ta_talk_remnick John Paul II] . The New Yorker Magazine. April 11, 2004. ]

The Pope is our enemy. . . . Due to his uncommon skills and great sense of humor he is dangerous, because he charms everyone, especially journalists. Besides, he goes for cheap gestures in his relations with the crowd, for instance, [he] puts on a highlander’s hat, shakes all hands, kisses children, etc. . . . It is modeled on American presidential campaigns. . . . Because of the activities of the Church in Poland our activities designed to atheize the youth not only cannot diminish but must intensely develop. . . . In this respect all means are allowed and we cannot afford sentiments.David Remnick. [http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/050411ta_talk_remnick John Paul II] . The New Yorker Magazine. April 11, 2004. ]

Ali Agca had made several trips to Sofia, Bulgaria, and stayed in a hotel favored by the Bulgarian (DS). In Rome he had also had contacts with a Bulgarian agent whose cover was the Bulgarian national airline office. Soon after the shooting, Sergei Antonov, a Bulgarian working in Rome for "Balkan Air", was arrested based on Ağca's testimony and accused of being the Bulgarian agent who masterminded the plot. In 1986, after a three-year trial, he was found not guilty. Paul B. Henze. "The Plot to Kill the Pope", Holiday House, 1985] According to Paul Henze (1985), he later stated that in Sofia, he was once approached by the Bulgarian Secret Service and Turkish mafiosi, who offered him three million German mark to assassinate the Pope. Paul B. Henze. "The Plot to Kill the Pope", Holiday House, 1985]

Columnist Eric Margolis commented that Ağca was an ideal candidate, because while Ağca appeared to be a Turkish neo-fascist he was really being run by KGB via its Bulgarian subordinates, in a classic false flag operation. [ Eric Margolis, [http://www.ericmargolis.com/archives/2005/04/the_trail_of_th.php The Trail Of The Pope’s Assassination Leads Right To Moscow] , April 5, 2005 ] The Bulgarians chose Ağca to supply themselves with plausible deniability; choosing a member of the Grey Wolves that had been involved with the local KGB in drug smuggling routes through Bulgaria to Western Europe would distance themselves because of the implausibility of the link. [ Arnaud de Borchgrave, [http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/4/5/160320.shtml The Attempted Assassination of John Paul II] , April 6, 2005 ]

The Bulgarian secret services have always protested their alleged involvement and argued that Ağca's story was an anti-Communist plant placed by the Italian secret service (SISMI), and the CIA. [ [http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/news/media_desk.htm#Gladio Secret Warfare: Operation Gladio and NATO's Stay-Behind Armies] ETH Zürich research project on Gladio directed by Dr. Daniele Ganser ]

According to Ferdinando Imposimato, an Italian prosecutor in charge of the assassination investigation, Ağca has confirmed the KGB and the Bulgarian involvement during their many private conversations in 1997-2000, tying it to the mysterious 1998 murder of Colonel Alois Estermann, a Swiss Guard. Ferdinando Imposimato has alleged a link with the East German secret service.

The Mitrokhin Commission's claims

According to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, documents recovered from former East German intelligence services confirm the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II was ordered by the Soviet KGB and assigned to Bulgarian and East German agents with the Stasi to coordinate the operation and cover up the traces afterwards, however, Markus Wolf, former Stasi spy-master, has denied any links, and claimed the files had already been sent in 1995 . [ [http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1538173,00.html Stasi Files Implicate KGB in Pope Shooting] . Deutsche Welle. January 4, 2005]

In March 2006, the controversial Mitrokhin Commission, set up by Silvio Berlusconi and headed by "Forza Italia" senator Paolo Guzzanti, supported once again the Bulgarian theory, which had been denounced by John Paul II during his travel to Bulgaria. Senator Guzzanti claimed that "leaders of the former Soviet Union were behind the assassination attempt", alleging that "the leadership of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate Pope John Paul" because of his support for Solidarity, relaying "this decision to the military secret services" (and not the KGB). [ cite news | title=Soviets 'had Pope shot for backing Solidarity' | publisher=The Daily Telegraph | date=March 3, 2006 | url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/03/wpope03.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/03/ixworld.html ] The report's claims were based on recent computer analysis of photographs that purported to demonstrate Antonov's presence in St Peter's Square during the shooting and on information brought by the French anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, a controversial figure whose last feat was to indict Rwandese president Paul Kagame, claiming he had deliberately provoked the 1994 Rwandan Genocide against his own ethnic group in order to take the power [ [http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20061121.FIG000000175_rwanda_bruguiere_incrimine_paul_kagame.html Rwanda : Bruguière incrimine Paul Kagamé] , "Le Figaro", 21 November 2006 fr icon] . According to "Le Figaro", Bruguière, who is in close contacts as well with Moscow as with Washington DC, including intelligence agents, has been accused by many of his colleagues of "privileging the reason of state over law." [ "Le Figaro", 22 November 2006, "Un juge provocateur", p.2 ]

Both Russia and Bulgaria condemned the report. ""For Bulgaria, this case closed with the court decision in Rome in March 1986," Foreign Ministry spokesman Dimitar Tsanchev said, while also recalling the Pope's comments during his May 2002 visit to Bulgaria. [ cite news|title=Soviet Union ordered Pope shooting: Italy commission|publisher=Reuters | date=March 2, 2006 | url=http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-03-02T154206Z_01_L02207710_RTRUKOC_0_US-POPE-ASSASSINATION.xml&rpc=22 ] Senator Guzzanti said that the commission had decided to re-open the report's chapter on the assassination attempt in 2005, after the Pope wrote about it in his last book, "Memory and Identity: Conversations Between Millenniums". The Pope wrote that he was convinced the shooting was not Ağca's initiative and that "someone else masterminded it and someone else commissioned it". The Mitrokhin Commission also claimed current Prime minister of Italy, Romano Prodi, was the "KGB's man in Italy". At the end of December 2006, Mario Scaramella, one of the main informer of senator Guzzanti, was arrested and charged, among other things, of defamation. Rome's prosecutor Pietro Salvitti, in charge of the investigations concerning Mario Scaramella, cited by "La Repubblica", showed that Nicolò Pollari, head of SISMI, the Italian military intelligence agency and indicted in the "Imam Rapito affair", as well as SISMI n°2, Marco Mancini, arrested in July 2006 for the same reason, were some of the informers, alongside Mario Scaramella, of senator Paolo Guzzanti. Beside targeting Romano Prodi and his staff, this "network", according to Pietro Salvitti's words, also aimed at defaming General Giuseppe Cucchi (current director of the Cesis), Milan's judges Armando Spataro, in charge of the Imam Rapito case, and Guido Salvini, as well as "La Reppublica" reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe D'Avanzo, who discovered the Yellowcake forgery affair [ [http://www.repubblica.it/2007/01/sezioni/cronaca/caso-scaramella/caso-scaramella/caso-scaramella.html Il falso dossier di Scaramella - "Così la Russia manipola Prodi"] , "La Repubblica", 11 January 2007 it icon] . The investigation also showed a connection between Scaramella and the CIA, in particular through Filippo Marino, one of Scaramella's closest partners since the 1990s and co-founder of the ECPP, who lives today in the US. Marino has acknowledged in an interview an association with former and active CIA officers, including Robert Lady, former CIA station chief in Milan, indicted by prosecutor Armando Spataro for having coordinated the abduction of Abu Omar, the "Imam Rapito affair" [ "International Herald Tribune", 9 January 2007, "How one man insinuated himself into poisoning case". [http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/09/news/mario.php see here] en icon] .

Other theories

Some people, notably Edward S. Herman, co-author with Frank Brodhead of "The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection" (1986), and Michael Parenti, felt Ağca's story was dubious, noting that Ağca made no claims of Bulgarian involvement until he had been isolated in solitary confinement and visited by Italian Military Intelligence (SISMI) agents. On September 25, 1991, former CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman (now Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy) revealed that his colleagues, following hierarchical orders, had falsified their analysis in order to support the accusation. He declared to the US Senate intelligence committee that "the CIA hadn't any proof" concerning this alleged "Bulgarian connection" Neither the Severino Santiapichi court, nor the investigation by judge Franco Ionta, found evidence that that SISMI planted Ağca's story. A French lawyer, Christian Roulette, who authored books blaming Western intelligence agencies for the assassination attempt, testified in court that documentary evidence he referred to actually did not exist. [cite news | title = Italian Judge Said to Drop Probe of Agca Being Coached | publisher = Washington Post | date = 1985-12-22] [cite news | title = Pope Trial: What Secret Files? | author = Gordon Crovitz | publisher = The Wall Street Journal | date = 1986-01-08] [cite news | title = Court in Pope plot won't extend trial to hear testimony in U.S. | publisher = The New York Times | date = 1986-01-15] [cite book | title = Giovanni Paolo II, Antonov, Agca. La pista | author = Christian Roulette | year = 1984 | publisher = Edito da Napoleone | location = Rome]

The Bulgarian secret services have always protested their alleged involvement and argued that Ağca's story was an anti-Communist plant placed by the Grey Wolves, the Italian secret service, and the CIA - all three of whom had cooperated in NATO's secret Gladio network [ [http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/news/media_desk.htm#Gladio Secret Warfare: Operation Gladio and NATO's Stay-Behind Armies] ETH Zurich research project on Gladio directed by Dr. Daniele Ganser ] . Gladio was at the time involved in Italy's strategy of tension, also followed in Turkey by Counter-Guerrilla, the Turkish branch of Gladio. The Pope's assassination would hereafter have taken place in this frame. Edward Herman has argued that Michael Ledeen, who was involved in the Iran-Contra Affair and had alleged ties to the Italian P2 masonic lodge also linked to Gladio, was employed by the CIA to propagate the Bulgarian theory [ cite news | title=Veteran neo-con advisor moves on Iran | publisher=Asia Times | date=June 26, 2003 | url=http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EF26Ak03.html ] . Indeed, the "Monde diplomatique" alleged that Abdullah Çatlı, a leader of the Grey Wolves, had organized the assassination attempt "in exchange for the sum of 3 million German Marks" for the Grey Wolves cite news | title=Turkey's pivotal role in the international drug trade (in English) | publisher=Le Monde diplomatique | date=July 1998 | url=http://mondediplo.com/1998/07/05turkey ] . In Rome, Catli declared to the judge in 1985 "that he had been contacted by the BND, the German intelligence agency, which would have promised him a nice sum of money if he implicated the Russian and Bulgarian services in the assassination attempt against the Pope". According to colonel Alparslan Türkes, the founder of the Grey Wolves, "Catli has cooperated in the frame of a secret service working for the good of the state" fr icon [http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/1997/03/LEE/8019.html "Les liaisons dangereuses de la police turque"] , in "Le Monde diplomatique", March 1997 ] .

Another theory, described in the Gordon Thomas's book , rejects the KGB, Turkish and Bulgarian connections. According to Thomas, a British specialist on intelligence, the assassination was ordered by Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini as a first act of Jihad, the Muslim holy war, against Christianity and the Occident. This theory is based on the following elements: The Grey Wolves organization was pro-Iranian; Mehmet Ali Ağca was trained in Iran; the text of a 1979 letter sent to the press by Mehmet Ali Ağca just after he killed a Turkish journalist used formulas such as "Supreme Commander of the Crusaders" that are directly taken from Khomeini's style, while Ağca is nearly illiterate. The 1983 Pope visit to his aggressor in jail was aimed to confirm this theory, just uncovered by the Israeli intelligence agency.

Finally, Jack Chick claims that Pope John Paul II, a good Communist for many years, engineered his own assassination in 1981 to shame Islam into warming relations with the Vatican, since the would-be killer was a Muslim. This was because the Catholic Church's Vatican Islam Conspiracy to create Islam and make its leader Muhammed their ultimate warrior backfired against them. [ Chick, Jack [http://www.chick.com/reading/comics/0117/0117_fourpages.asp?PG=01 The Prophet] pg 30 ]

A Vatican connection?

On June 26, 2000 Pope John Paul II released the "Third Secret of Fatima" Fact|date=February 2007 in which he claimed that Ağca's assassination attempt was the fulfillment of this Secret. Some doubt the Church's full disclosure of the contents of this Secret, believing that it actually predicted the Apocalypse. While in prison on remand, Ağca was widely reported to have developed an obsession with Fatima and during the trial claimed that he was the second coming of Jesus Christ and called on the Vatican to release the Third Secret.

On March 31, 2005, just two days prior to the Pope's death, Ağca gave an interview to the Italian newspaper "La Repubblica". He claimed to be working on a book about the assassination attempt. "La Repubblica" quoted Ağca claiming at length that he had accomplices in the Vatican who helped him with the assassination attempt, saying "the devil is inside Vatican's wall". He also said:

:"Many calculating politicians are worried about what revealing the complete truth would do. Some of them fear that the Vatican will have a spiritual collapse like the Berlin Wall. Let me ask, why don't the CIA, the Sismi, the Sisde and other intelligence agencies reveal the truth about the Orlandi case?

:Q: They say it's because there is still some uncertainty in the Emanuela Orlandi case.

:Ağca: In the 1980's, certain Vatican supporters believed that I was the new messiah and to free me they organized all the intrigue about Emanuela Orlandi and the other incidents they won't reveal." [ en icon/it icon cite news | title= "L'ultima verità di Ali Agca "Avevo dei complici in Vaticano" | date=March 31 2005|publisher=La Repubblica |url=http://www.repubblica.it/2005/c/sezioni/esteri/papa4/nuovagca/nuovagca.html (English translation - "The Latest Truth From Ali Agca: 'I had accomplices in the Vatican'" with some commentary [http://www.weblog.ro/soj/2005-03-31.html#28411 here] ) ]

Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, disappeared at age 15 on June 22, 1983. Anonymous phone calls offered her release in exchange for the release of Ağca. Archbishop Paul Marcinkus was alleged to be part of the kidnapping, although no charges were ever laid.

A week after this interview, "Associated Press" reported Ağca denying having made such claims. [ en icon/tr icon cite news | title= "Agca Denies Accusing Vatican of Complicity in Pope Shooting" (English version) | date=2005 | publisher=Turkish Weekly | url=http://www.turkishweekly.net/news.php?id=7341 ]

Further viewing

*cite video | people=Jon Blair | date2=2005 | url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0397850/ | title=Zero Hour - The Plot to Kill the Pope | publisher=3BM Television

References

External links

* [http://www.osaarchivum.org/db/fa/300-1-1-1.htm Open Society Archives: Records of the RFE Rome Bureau on Antonov trial (boxes 16-19)]

ee also

* Reagan assassination attempt
* Mehmet Ali Agca