Italy says Soviets tried to kill Pope

IT IS “beyond any reasonable doubt” that the Soviet Union was behind the 1981 attempt to kill Pope John Paul II, an Italian parliamentary commission has concluded.

A draft report made available yesterday said the commission found that the pope was a danger to the Soviet bloc because of his support for the Solidarity labour movement in his native Poland. Solidarity was the first free trade union in communist eastern Europe.

It said Moscow was alarmed because “Poland was the main military base of the Warsaw Pact, its main supply lines and troop concentrations were there”.

The report added: “This commission believes, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the leaders of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate the pope Karol Wojtyla.”

The draft has no bearing on any judicial investigations, which have long been closed.

If the commission approves the final report, it would be the first time an official body has blamed the Soviet Union.

The report also said a photograph shows that a Bulgarian man acquitted of involvement in the 13 May, 1981, assassination attempt was in St Peter’s Square when the pontiff was shot by Mehmet Ali Agca.

The Bulgarian secret service was allegedly working for Soviet military intelligence, but the Italian court held that the evidence was insufficient to convict the Bulgarians in the plot.

Agca, a Turk, has changed his story often and investigators said it was never clear who he was working for. He initially blamed the Soviets.

The Interfax news agency carried a denial from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman, Boris Labusov, who said: “All assertions of any kind of participation in the attempt on the pope’s life by Soviet special services, including foreign intelligence, are completely absurd.”

The Italian report said Soviet military intelligence - and not the KGB - was responsible.

Agca served 19 years in prison for shooting the pope.

The report said the commission used all the evidence gathered during trials in Italy as well as information given by a French anti-terrorism judge. That information apparently stemmed from the French investigation of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, a terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, held in France since his capture in Sudan in 1994.

The commission president, Senator Paolo Guzzanti said it 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.

Antonov’s lawyer, Giuseppe Consolo, said the photograph was a case of mistaken identity and the man in the photograph came forward during the investigation as an American tourist of Hungarian origin.

Mr Guzzanti said the photo was discarded because technology then could not determine if it was really Antonov, but recent computer comparisons with other shots of the Bulgarian show that “there is a 100 per cent compatibility”.

“We don’t believe it’s possible to reopen the case against Antonov,” he said. “We just want to set the record straight.”

The report must be approved by the full commission, which meets on 7 March.

VICTOR L SIMPSON