Word: mantarov
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...Bulgarians, according to Mantarov, picked Agca as the assassin because he was known as a right-winger with no ties to any Communist country. In November 1979, unknown accomplices slipped Agca out of a Turkish prison. Agca then began a murky trek that ended in St. Peter's Square on May 13,1981. According to Mantarov, the Turk was to meet his own fate there as well: he was supposed to be killed immediately after shooting the Pope...
...Bulgarians, predictably, dismissed Mantarov's account. An embassy spokesman in Rome described Mantarov as nothing more than a mechanic formerly employed by a Bulgarian firm in France. Mantarov, meanwhile, has dropped out of sight. French intelligence officials refused to admit last week that they had ever spoken to him, let alone that he had told them anything about the Bulgarian connection. Mantarov is most likely still in French custody and living under a false name...
TIME has confirmed that Mantarov gave French officials an account charging that the KGB ordered the papal assassination. TIME has also learned that Mantarov did not have diplomatic status at the Bulgarian embassy; he was, in fact, a technician attached to the commercial section. And at least one important detail in the Times story may be wrong: Bulgarian émigrés living in Paris insist that Mantarov defected on April 11, 1981, not the following July. If the earlier date is correct, Mantarov would have defected before the assassination attempt. The timing is crucial, since Mantarov then could have...
Even though it is not known when Mantarov told French authorities about the alleged KGB involvement, Paris has been remarkably stingy in sharing its information. The French are believed to have briefed Washington only after they knew that what Mantarov had to say was going to be made public. Nor does it appear that the French told Italian authorities about Mantarov, despite the fact that Italian Judge Ilario Martella has been conducting a meticulous investigation into the assassination attempt for the past 17 months. When TIME Rome Correspondent Barry Kalb asked Martella last week if he had been told about...
...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...