Word: martella
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...must be held as certain that a plot existed to kill the Pope." After nearly three years of investigation, Judge Ilario Martella added official credibility last week to a suspicion long held by much of the world. The judge did not, however, say who directed the conspiracy or what its aims might have been. Instead, Martella ordered three Bulgarians and four Turks to be tried for conspiring to kill the Pope. In signing the secret 1,243-page summary of the case, Martella made another extraordinary allegation: two people fired at John Paul...
Even the most ardent proponents of a conspiracy theory have assumed until now that the only would-be assassin in St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981, was Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish terrorist apprehended seconds after the shooting. But when Martella was ordered to re-open the investigation into the assassination attempt in November 1981, there was already some uncertainty about whether two or three shots had been fired at the Pontiff. Confusion also surrounded a photograph, taken by a tourist immediately after the shooting, that shows a young man running from the square. That man, according...
After extensive ballistics tests, Martella concluded that three shots had been fired at the Pope and that only the first two came from Agca's Browning pistol. The third bullet, which hit the Pope's left hand and right arm, was fired by Celik, according to the judge. That slug was never found, but a reconstruction of its trajectory showed that it could not have been fired by Agca. Though Agca at first tried to protect Celik, who investigators say was "like a brother" to him, he eventually confessed that Antonov Celik was in the square, though only...
...revealed the intricacies of Agca's account. The 78-page confidential report, made public by freelance Investigative Reporter Claire Sterling* in the New York Times, was compiled by State Prosecutor Antonio Albano and drawn from some 25,000 pages of material assembled by Investigating Magistrate Ilarío Martella. The report details Agca's longstanding association with the Turkish Mafia and the Gray Wolves, an ultrarightist band of Turkish terrorists. It goes on to discuss his recruitment by the Bulgarian secret service and his bungled shooting and failed escape. While taking scrupulous pains not to mention the Soviet...
Magistrate Martella has maintained a strict silence on the inquiry, though last month he informed Agca that he was under investigation for slandering Antonov, apparently by implicating the Bulgarian in an alleged plot to kill Polish Labor Leader Lech Walesa earlier that same year...