Word: bulgarians
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...months, newspapers were awash with a spectacular charge: the attempt on Pope John Paul II's life in 1981, declared Italian authorities last winter, had the backing of the Bulgarian secret service, presumably acting on orders from the Soviet Union. But the accusation depended on the secret confession of the gunman convicted of the shooting, Turkish Terrorist Mehmet Ali Agca, and as the unhurried investigation into his claims continued without producing further important revelations, interest in the case slowly dwindled. Now the intrigue has leaped suddenly back to life. As he was taken from a Rome police station last...
...Turk for the first time confirmed previously published accounts of his confession to Italian investigators. Speaking in broken English and flawed Italian, he claimed that he was trained as a terrorist "in Bulgaria and in Syria." Italian officials believe that Agca was aided in the assassination attempt by three Bulgarians: two former employees at the Rome embassy and Sergei Ivanov Antonov, onetime Rome manager of the Bulgarian airline, who is now being held in a Rome jail pending the outcome of the investigation. Was Antonov involved? newsmen asked, as Agca climbed into a police van. "I knew Sergei," he replied...
...ostensibly kept watch on vital French nuclear installations in his region, he is known to have been running a team of undercover agents and informants, providing information on Soviet intelligence activities in France. He made several trips to Italy, which prompted speculation that he might have been investigating Bulgarian links in the plot to kill Pope John Paul II. Nut could also have played a role in uncovering Soviet Agent Victor Pronin, who was arrested in Rome the day before the French intelligence officer was murdered. Italian Under Secretary of Defense Bartolo Ciccardini seemed convinced that Nut's death...
...valuable is Mantarov's account? The Bulgarian agent may or may not have told Mantarov the truth; Mantarov, in turn, may have distorted what he was told. The story breaks little new ground, but it does buttress previous reports. It has been speculated, for example, that the young man who had been spotted running from St. Peter's Square with a gun in his hand was there not to help Agca but to shoot him as soon as the Turk finished his deadly assignment...
...Peter's Square, Italian authorities have suspected that Agca had accomplices. But at his trial in July 1981 the Turkish terrorist stoutly insisted that he had acted alone. In the spring of 1982 Agca began changing his story. He reportedly told Martella that while staying in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia in 1980, he was offered 3 million deutsche marks (then worth $1.25 million) to kill the Pope by Bekir Celenk, a shadowy Turkish businessman with ties to his country's arms and drug smugglers. In Rome, Agca said, he met with three Bulgarians, including Sergei Ivanov Antonov...