Word: marini
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...that year in St. Peter's Square, was working for Bulgarian agents and, by implication, the Soviet Union. The ten-month trial of Agca's alleged accomplices--and of Agca himself for illegal possession of the pistol that he used to shoot the Pope--ended when Prosecutor Antonio Marini handed the case to the jury without a closing summary. "There were no new arguments for me to rebut," he explained later...
After 6 1/2 days of deliberation, the jury last week delivered its verdict. To the surprise of no one, the eight-member panel acquitted all three Bulgarian defendants on the technical grounds of insufficient evidence, following a formal recommendation made by Marini last month. Three of the Turkish defendants were acquitted on the same technicality. But one of them, Omer Bagci, was convicted of smuggling into Italy the Browning 9-mm semiautomatic pistol used in the shooting and was sentenced to three years in prison. Agca was also found guilty as charged and given an additional year in jail...
...court may fully absolve defendants or find that they cannot be convicted because of inadequate evidence. The verdicts were celebrated in Sofia and Moscow. The Soviet news agency TASS declared that charges of a Communist plot to kill the Pope had "crumbled to nothing." For his part, Marini vowed to fight on: "The case is still open. We are back to the starting point...
Given the obstacles and numbing complexities of the case, some observers have argued that it should never have come to trial. But the Italian judiciary felt honor-bound to move against the alleged assassins. Says Marini: "This trial had to take place." The legal proceedings, moreover, are not entirely finished. A Roman court has begun a new formal inquiry into the presumed plot and assigned a trio of senior investigators to handle it. In the Netherlands, officials continue to probe the background of a Turk who, on the final day of a 1985 papal visit, tried to enter the country...
...that, Marini seemed to believe that the Bulgarians were guilty. He rejected their alibis and complained of being denied access to key witnesses. He also came down hard on three Turks who are being tried in the case, asking life sentences for two and a 24-year term for the third. The Soviet Union, for its part, was jubilant over the call for the Bulgarians' acquittal. Radio Moscow said the recommendation proved that the conspiracy charges were fabricated by the CIA and its Western allies "to discredit Bulgaria and other socialist countries...