Gunman Agca may reveal KGB plot to kill Pope John Paul II
By ANIMonday, January 18, 2010
LONDON - The Turkish gunman, who tried to kill Pope John Paul II nearly 30 years ago, is expected to finally shed light on whether his assassination attempt on the latter was part of a KGB plot.
Mehmet Ali Agca, 52, said last week that he would “answer all questions” about the murder attempt after his release on Monday.
When he was arrested minutes after the attack on St Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981, he claimed that he had acted alone.
In confused, often rambling testimony, he later indicated that Bulgarian agents acting on behalf of Moscow were behind the attack, but then withdrew this.
John Paul II met and forgave Agca, a former member of the Turkish far-right Grey Wolves, in his cell in 1983 while the gunman was serving a 19-year sentence in an Italian high-security prison.
Agca was pardoned in 2000 and returned to Turkey, where he was immediately re-arrested and given a ten-year prison sentence for murdering a Turkish newspaper editor in 1979.
Italian magistrates who investigated the atack on the Pope remain convinced that there was a Soviet plot, arising from Moscow’s fears that an anti-communist revolt in his native Poland would bring down the entire Soviet system. (ANI)
