Post by Tulameen on Apr 1, 2005 11:22:11 GMT -5
Cardinal dismisses claim by man who shot John Paul II
ROME, Italy (AP) -- The Turkish man who shot Pope John Paul II was quoted Thursday as saying Vatican prelates helped him carry out the 1981 attack in St. Peter's Square, but the claim was quickly dismissed by a Vatican cardinal.
Mehmet Ali Agca, now jailed in Turkey, shot John Paul in the abdomen on May 13, 1981, while the pope was riding in an open car in Rome's St. Peter's Square. He has given conflicting reasons for the attack on the pope and his motives remain unclear.
"Without the help of priests and cardinals I would have not been able to carry out that action," Agca was quoted Thursday as saying in an interview with the Italian daily La Repubblica. "The devil is within the Vatican."
But in an apparently contradictory remark, Ali Agca also said in the interview that "nobody in the world knew of my attempt."
Agca was extradited to Turkey in 2000 after serving almost 20 years in Italy for the shooting of the pope, and is now serving time in jail for separate crimes.
"Ali Agca has always sidetracked (investigations) rather than disclosing real facts," Cardinal Roberto Tucci, former organizer of papal trips, told Vatican Radio. "One must be very suspicious of his statements."
Italian newspapers reported this week that newly discovered documents show the attack on the pope was ordered by the Soviet KGB and organized by the Bulgarian secret service with the help of secret police of former East Germany.
According to Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica, documents found in the archive of the Stasi, the East German secret police, appear to confirm that Bulgarian agents, acting on the orders of their powerful KGB counterparts, used Ali Agca to carry out the attack, while the Stasi was used to coordinate the operation and cover up its traces.
The newspapers say the files have been given to Bulgaria and will be made available to an Italian parliamentary commission investigating the activities in Europe of former communist regimes.
The recovered papers consist mainly of letters detailing the cooperation between East German and Bulgarian agents to avoid blame for the attack from falling on communist bloc countries, Corriere said. It was not immediately clear whether the documents contained direct proof of conspiracy.
"We must now see what emerges from the Stasi documents. The suspicion is that the Bulgarians were carrying out orders from the Soviet KGB," said Tucci. "But let's leave the task of examining the papers to magistrates and historians."
There has long been speculation that the assassination attempt was carried out at the request of Soviet leaders, who were allegedly alarmed by the pope's support for the Solidarity trade union in Poland and his outspoken opposition to communist regimes.
Three Bulgarians suspected of complicity in the shooting were acquitted by an Italian court because of a lack of evidence.
In 2002, John Paul sought to lay the issue to rest, declaring during a visit to Bulgaria that he never believed there was a Bulgarian connection to Agca.
However, in his recently published book, "Memory and Identity: Conversations Between Millenniums," the pope returned to the issue by saying that Agca had been maneuvered by another party.
"Ali Agca, as everyone says, is a professional assassin. The shooting was not his initiative, someone else planned it, someone else commissioned him," the pope wrote.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Find this article at:
www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/03/31/pope.attacker.ap/index.html
ROME, Italy (AP) -- The Turkish man who shot Pope John Paul II was quoted Thursday as saying Vatican prelates helped him carry out the 1981 attack in St. Peter's Square, but the claim was quickly dismissed by a Vatican cardinal.
Mehmet Ali Agca, now jailed in Turkey, shot John Paul in the abdomen on May 13, 1981, while the pope was riding in an open car in Rome's St. Peter's Square. He has given conflicting reasons for the attack on the pope and his motives remain unclear.
"Without the help of priests and cardinals I would have not been able to carry out that action," Agca was quoted Thursday as saying in an interview with the Italian daily La Repubblica. "The devil is within the Vatican."
But in an apparently contradictory remark, Ali Agca also said in the interview that "nobody in the world knew of my attempt."
Agca was extradited to Turkey in 2000 after serving almost 20 years in Italy for the shooting of the pope, and is now serving time in jail for separate crimes.
"Ali Agca has always sidetracked (investigations) rather than disclosing real facts," Cardinal Roberto Tucci, former organizer of papal trips, told Vatican Radio. "One must be very suspicious of his statements."
Italian newspapers reported this week that newly discovered documents show the attack on the pope was ordered by the Soviet KGB and organized by the Bulgarian secret service with the help of secret police of former East Germany.
According to Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica, documents found in the archive of the Stasi, the East German secret police, appear to confirm that Bulgarian agents, acting on the orders of their powerful KGB counterparts, used Ali Agca to carry out the attack, while the Stasi was used to coordinate the operation and cover up its traces.
The newspapers say the files have been given to Bulgaria and will be made available to an Italian parliamentary commission investigating the activities in Europe of former communist regimes.
The recovered papers consist mainly of letters detailing the cooperation between East German and Bulgarian agents to avoid blame for the attack from falling on communist bloc countries, Corriere said. It was not immediately clear whether the documents contained direct proof of conspiracy.
"We must now see what emerges from the Stasi documents. The suspicion is that the Bulgarians were carrying out orders from the Soviet KGB," said Tucci. "But let's leave the task of examining the papers to magistrates and historians."
There has long been speculation that the assassination attempt was carried out at the request of Soviet leaders, who were allegedly alarmed by the pope's support for the Solidarity trade union in Poland and his outspoken opposition to communist regimes.
Three Bulgarians suspected of complicity in the shooting were acquitted by an Italian court because of a lack of evidence.
In 2002, John Paul sought to lay the issue to rest, declaring during a visit to Bulgaria that he never believed there was a Bulgarian connection to Agca.
However, in his recently published book, "Memory and Identity: Conversations Between Millenniums," the pope returned to the issue by saying that Agca had been maneuvered by another party.
"Ali Agca, as everyone says, is a professional assassin. The shooting was not his initiative, someone else planned it, someone else commissioned him," the pope wrote.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Find this article at:
www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/03/31/pope.attacker.ap/index.html