Word: bulgarians
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...often contradictory testimony in a Rome courtroom, Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981, gave the first courtroom explanations last week of where he learned his deadly skills. Agca declared that in 1977 he had been trained by "Bulgarian and Czech experts" in a camp in Latakia, Syria. He said that he and other Turkish terrorists, together with trainees from France, Italy, Spain and West Germany, were instructed in the use of guns and bombs. Then he added: "I affirm with certainty that the Soviet Union is the political...
Escorted from his cell in Rome's Rebibbia Prison by a heavy police convoy, Mehmet Ali Agca arrived in a high-security courtroom in Rome last week, presumably to tell a jury that he had been hired by Bulgarian intelligence officials to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981. But as the 27-year-old Turk settled into his white steel cage in a former gymnasium converted to a courtroom, he had loftier matters on his mind. "I am Jesus Christ!" Agca shouted. "I am omnipotent. I announce the end of the world. All will be destroyed." The bizarre outburst...
...life imprisonment two months later, the presiding judge, Severino Santiapichi, who is also conducting the current trial, suggested that "hidden minds" had directed the Turk. Italian authorities reopened the case that autumn. The investigation heated up after Agca, in a series of sometimes contradictory jailhouse revelations, described a "Bulgarian connection." Two years later, an Italian prosecutor hinted that the Soviet Union might have been involved in a plot against the Pope, using Bulgarian agents. By October 1984, Ilario Martella, the investigating magistrate, had compiled sufficient evidence of a conspiracy to order the trial of the eight alleged co- conspirators being...
...Soviet Union, where a national committee has been formed to issue statements in defense of Sergei Antonov, the former representative in Rome of Bulgaria's Balkan Airlines and the only Bulgarian defendant present in the courtroom, the press leaped on Agca's outbursts as evidence that his story was worthless. Prosecutor Marini disagreed. "When (Agca) begins to talk about facts," he said, "he is extremely reliable." Still, Marini was relieved when Bagci calmly, albeit reluctantly, held up under intense questioning...
...major portion of Agca's testimony will undoubtedly focus on the so-called ( Bulgarian connection: the prosecution's contention that Agca and a co- conspirator were hired by three Bulgarians to carry out the killing. Only one of the three, Sergei Antonov, 46, ex-chief of the Balkan Bulgarian Airlines office in Rome, is being held by the Italians. The others, former officials of the Bulgarian embassy in Rome, Jelio Kolev Vassilev, 43, and Todor Sotyanov Ayvazov, 42, are back home and have refused to return to Italy. The Bulgarian government has said that it will fully cooperate with...