Page 1, 25th April 1997

25th April 1997

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Page 1, 25th April 1997 — Mafia behind plot to kill Pope, claims supergrass
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Mafia behind plot to kill Pope, claims supergrass

BY BRUCE JOHNSTON IN ROME THE MAFIA WAS behind the assassination plot which left the Pope badly injured in 1991, according to a supergrass.
Vincenzo Calcara, a turncoat described by Mafia watchers as a serious and reliable collaborator, said Ali Agca, the Turk who shot the Pontiff in St Peter's Square, was a hit-man working for the Mafia.
Calcara said that Salvatore "Toto" Rina, the Mafia's now jailed Godfather, and Antonio Vaccarino, a former mayor of a small town who has been embroiled in many organised-crime inquiries, were behind the attempt.
Also working together with them was a man called Antonov, whom the other two later had killed and secretly buried near Milan, Calcara said.
Magistrates in Sicily have sent transcripts of his testimony to colleagues in Rome; however reports said that a search for a body following the turncoat's indications had produced nothing, adding that investigators had expressed their doubts as to the veracity of the claims. "In the beginning it was said that the Mafia had ordered that the Pope be killed, but there is nothing to suggest that this is true," said Antonio Marini, the prosecutor who handled investigations into the assassination attempt.
However, Agca did visit Palermo four months before he shot the Pope; and Calcara recently accused a leading Vatican figure and Sicilian criminal exponents of recycling dirty money. Meanwhile, the Mafia's jailed "cashier", Pippo Calo, has become the object of a new arrest warrant.




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