Soviets tried to kill John Paul, says report

BY ED WEST
THE &Ansi Union was responsible for the 1981 assassination attempt on John Paul II, according to an Italian parliamentary investigation to be presented to the national assembly this month. The 30-man corturiission also concluded that the USSR used the Bulgarians as cover to murder the Pontiff, who was viewed as a threat to eastern European
Communism .
The Pope was shot in the abdomen in St Peter's Square on May 13, 1981, but was saved by a blood transfusion after emergency treatment. Arrested soon after, Turkish national Mehrnet Ali Agca served 19 years in an Italian jail for the failed assassination attempt, before extradition to his homeland for the murder of a newspaper editor.
After initially stating that he had acted alone in his mission, Agca claimed to have been hired by the Bulgarian secret service. A trial in 1986 failed to prove this, and Agea later reverted to his original, lone-gunman story, but many in Italy have remained suspicious.
The commission, established to determine the extent of KGB activity in Italy after a Soviet archivist had defected to Britain in 1992, found evidence that a Bulgarian agent was in St Peter's Square at the time of the shooting. "This commission believes," the report stated, "beyond any reasonable doubt, that the leadership of the Soviet Union took the initiative to commit a crime of unique gravity, and eliminate the Pope, Karol Wojtyl a."
The parliamentary report also alleges that Sergei Antonov, the Bulgarian agent in Rome, was probably there to murder Agca after he had completed his mission.
The draft report will have no effect on judicial investigations, which arc closed, and the commission's presi dent Senator Paolo Guzzanti said they had no plans to prosecute Antonov, who was released following the 1986 trial. "We just want to set the record straight," he said.
The findings were rejected by the FSB, the Russian Federation's successor to the KGB, who supported a statement of denial by Vladimir Kryuchlcov, the deputy chairman of the KGB at the time of the shooting. "Such statements are not just a complete fabrication but also provo cation, absurdity and nonsense," said a spokesman for the FSB. "The Soviet Union and its forces had nothing to do with the attempted assassination on the Pope of Rome."
The fresh allegations come with the late Pontiff's first anniversary approaching, and will further cement the belief that John-Paul "the Great" had a large part in bringing down Communism, by inspiring the Solidarity movement in Poland and giving fresh hope to Christians behind the Iron Curtain.
And it is the latest twist in one of the more bizarre mysteries of the late 20th century.
After the shooting John Paul had asked people to "pray for his brother Agca, who I have sincerely forgiven". and the two met in prison just after Christmas two years later. He also kept in touch with the gunman's family, meeting his mother and brother, and after the Pontiff died, Agca's brother Adnan gave an interview in which he said the whole family were grieving for "their good friend".
In June 2000 the Pope released the third secret of Fatima and said that the assassination attempt was its fulfilment. The secrets generally referred to the rise and fall of Soviet Communism. Before the Pope's death last yearAgca sent him a letter wishing him well and warning him that the world would end soon.