Word: mehmet
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...shrines as Fatima in Portugal, Guadalupe in Mexico and Czestochowa in his native Poland. But a prospective 1981 visit to the most famous shrine of all, at Lourdes in southwestern France, had to be postponed when the Pope was shot in St. Peter's Square by Turkish Gunman Mehmet Ali Agca. John Paul believes that he owes his recovery from that attack to the Virgin Mary. Thus his two-day trip to Lourdes last week, marking the 125th anniversary of a shrine associated with healing, was a kind of thanks...
Repeatedly, the male voice crackled over the telephone lines. On each occasion the message was as unequivocal as it was unusual. Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old girl who was kidnaped last month in Rome, would be freed if Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who is serving a life sentence for trying to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981, was released. The girl's captors threatened to kill her unless their demands were met by midnight last Wednesday. But after the deadline passed the kidnapers remained out of touch, and Emanuela out of sight. The abductors' approach...
...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 week, Agca surprised waiting reporters by publicly implicating...
From the start, the evidence has come in bits and pieces, with each new shred making the mystery only more intriguing. Was the Soviet Union, acting through Bulgaria, behind the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II by Turkish Terrorist Mehmet Ali Agca on that sunny May afternoon in 1981? The latest fragment does not answer that question once and for all, but it tightens the web of circumstantial evidence around the Kremlin. A Bulgarian embassy worker who defected to France in 1981 has told French intelligence officials that the KGB devised the plot to kill the Pope...
...John Paul II touched down in Costa Rica last week, attention in Rome was distracted by new developments related to one of the darkest hours of the Pontiffs reign. Ever since the 1981 assassination attempt in St. Peter's Square, suspicion has grown that the convicted Turkish gunman, Mehmet Ali Agca, took his orders from Bulgarian agents, who in turn might have been acting with the knowledge of the Soviet Union. To date, Italian investigators have arrested one Bulgarian official in Rome for alleged complicity in the plot, and accused two others. Now Italian officials have begun examining links...