Word: sofias
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...acquittals amounted to less than a full declaration of innocence. Under Italian law, a 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...
...bespectacled deputy chief of Rome's Balkan Air office, who has been in Italian custody since 1982 and allegedly helped plan the plot. His presumed accomplices, Todor Aivazov, 43, and Zhelyo Vassilev, 44, Bulgarian embassy officials in Rome at the time of the shooting, were safely home in Sofia. Both left Italy shortly before Antonov's arrest as part of what Bulgarian officials called a normal embassy rotation. Two of the four Turkish defendants were also missing. Oral Celik, 27, the reputed second gunman who was photographed running from the scene of the shooting, is still at large. Mafia Boss...
...message is clear enough: Toe the line. Todor Zhivkov of Bulgaria last year had scheduled a trip to Western Europe in the interest of fostering closer relations with non-Communist countries. He abruptly canceled those plans after Gorbachev, acting for the ailing Chernenko, hurriedly visited the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, in December to confer with Zhivkov and, presumably, communicate Soviet displeasure. In dealing with the West, and the U.S. specifically, Gorbachev has not altered the line pursued by his predecessors in any substantive way. He has, however, taken a different approach to the atmospherics of the superpower relationship, going...
Twice during the week Agca elaborated on his earlier claim that the papal shooting had been commissioned for about $1.3 million by "Malenkov," whom he | identified as the first secretary of the Soviet embassy in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. Ten months before the assassination attempt, Agca said, he, Celik and two other Turks attended a strategy meeting in Room 911 of the Hotel Vitosha in Sofia at which Malenkov was present. "(Malenkov) said, 'Have you changed your mind about killing the Pope?' I said no, and he told me the reward would be 3 million marks," Agca testified...
...Soviet Union to the shooting in St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981. When Presiding Judge Severino Santiapichi expressed doubts about the statement, Agca dismissed the challenge with an offer. "I ask the court to show me the photos of all the personnel of the Soviet embassy at Sofia," he said. "I will surely recognize him." He went on to describe the alleged Soviet conspirator as being 5 ft. 11 in. tall, with a "long and full face," glasses, blond hair and a "sporting appearance...