COMMENTARY

Jailed Bulgarian victim of frame up

Wrongful imprisonment of an individual for more than
a year, without evidence, and slander of that person’s
country in a continuous, media-wide campaign, is the kind
of thing one would expect to hear protested in Western
capitals and parliaments.

But the frame-up and continued detention of Sergei
Antonov, a Bulgarian citizen, when it raises any interest at
all in the West, bring only new calumnies against Bulgaria
and its socialist neighbor, the Soviet Union.

People who cherish democratic rights are asking why.
The slanderous campaign to link Antonov with the
attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II by a Turkish
terrorist has failed to turn up a scrap of evidence.

Yet Antonov is still being held by Italian authorities.

He was ordered released from prison on bail Dec. 21
although he was immediately placed under house arrest.
The change was ostensibly made for reasons of Antonov’s
health — the Bulgarian citizen is suffering from various
ailments as a result of his year-long incarceration — but it
has renewed demands for his release and for an end to the
elaborate, but completely unsubstantiated campaign
against him.

A two-year inquiry into the evidence surrounding the
case was completed last month and turned over to Italian
state prosecutor Antonio Albano. The findings have not
yet been disclosed but reports have already indicated that
there is no evidence to tie Antonov to any crime.

Yet there are still media references to the “Bulgarian
connection” in the assassination attempt on Pope John
Paul II, the most recent having come following Agca’s
much-publicized meeting with the Pope.

It was on May 21, 1982 in St. Peter’s Square in the
Vatican that neo-fascist Ali Agca made an attempt on the
life of the Pope. Agca, already a convicted murderer, had
earlier “escaped” from Turkish prison wearing the uni-
form of an army officer and was subsequently sponsored
in his flight through western Europe by neo-fascist
organizations.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment for his assassina-
tion attempt on the Pope. Several months later, however,
following an interview with Italian authorities in his prison
cell, he launched his allegations implicating Antonov and
other Bulgarians in the plot.

November 25, 1983 marked a year since Antonov was
seized in Rome, in front of photo and television cameras

; eee ai
Sensationalist Italian tabloid screams about the “Bul-
garian connection” in the assassination attempt on the

Pope. The man identified in photo as Antonov later turned
out to be an American tourist.

and in the presence of many reporters, and accused as an
accomplice in the attack on the Pope. He had been ordered
arrested by Magistrate Ilario Martella on the strength of

accusations by Agca. The Bulgarian government stated

flatly that neither it nor Antonov, an official of Bulgaria’s
Balkan Airlines, was in any way connected with the attack.
In court, Agca’s charges were exposed as a web of lies.

Even Time magazine in December, 1982 acknowledged
there was “‘no convincing proof” of the so-called Bulgarian
connection.

The International Organization of Journalists which
devoted a special issue of IOJ Newsletter (Oct. 82) to what
it called the “inglorious end of a slanderous Western press
campaign,” noted:

@ The French paper Paris Match misrepresented a
photo in an effort to “prove” that Antonov was in St.
Peter’s Square at the time of the attack.

@ The USA’s Cable News Network “quoted” a high-
ranking Reagan official, saying the Pope had told U.S.
Secretary of State Shultz that he (the Pope) blamed Soviet
and Bulgarian secret services for the attack. Both the Pope
and Shultz later denied the sensational story.

@ When Agca’s “evidence” — given after a visit of the
Italian secret police to his cell — proved absolutely false,
the media which had screamed the loudest proved least
interested in the “news”.

Since that time, Italian police have taken Agca on a tour
of the area where he supposedly made contact with the
Bulgarian. The tour further demonstrated the absurdity of
Agca’s claims, one of which was that he and Antonov had
gone for a long walk together down Conciliazione Street
off St. Peter’s Square — a street which, like all the others
in the area that day, was jammed with worshippers, mak-
ing walking impossible.

According to several Italian newspapers, Agca was also
utterly wrong in describing the interior of a cafe in which
he and Antonov had allegedly met and was at a loss to
explain how he and Antonov had conversed when neither
shares a common language.

The questions persist despite the collapse of the plot.
Three stand out. Why Bulgaria? Why launch this demonic
effort so long after Agca’s sentencing? Why use the
attempt against the Pope?

An article in the Bulgarian Communist Party paper Robot-
nichesko Delo, expressed it:

“Why Bulgaria? Because of its friendship with the
USSR which is deeply rooted in history, in their common
cultural, linguistic and spiritual background . . .”

“Why this vicious campaign a year before the siting of
U.S. medium-range missiles in western Europe? (It) . . . coin-
cided with the upsurge of the peace movement in the
western world. Hence, to distract public opinion . . . the
suggestions of potential military aggressiveness of the
socialist states, to scare it with fables that the socialist
countries are the destabilizing factor, aiming, through pol-
itical terrorism to change (the West’s) way of living.

“And why John Paul II? The attempt against the Pope
attributed to Bulgaria and the USSR was intended to
exercise negative influence on hundreds of millions of
Catholics around the world and particularly on their
organizations, actively involved in the anti-war move-
ments. The organizers of the plot had special calculations
about Poland, which entered a period of stabilization after
the counter-revolutionary forces were defeated. They
expected to achieve a state of psychological shock: in
Poland, with subsequent deterioration in the strong ties
connecting the countries of the socialist community.”

sails around

Retired Polish miner

By NORMAN FARIA
BRIDGETOWN — The arrival in

Barbados of former coal miners Terzy .

Radomski and Bernard Kuczera of Po-
land on a round-the-world cruise on their

small yacht, has further stymied those °

who would like to portray socialist coun-
tries as ‘‘closed, rigid’’ societies.

Radomski and his colleague, Kuczera,
are sailing the 16 metre- (52 feet) long
Steel ketch Czarny Diament (Black
Diamond), in which they left their home
port of Szczecin on the northern Polish
coast in June 1978.

‘So far they have visited most of the
European countries bordering the Atlan-
tic, as well as the Mediterranean area. In
1979 they went through the Suez Canal
and called at several ports on the eastern
coast of Africa before rounding the Cape
of Good Hope to Saint Helena Island,
Trinidad, Grenada and then Barbados.
From here they go onto other islands in
the Caribbean then west across the
Caribbean, through the Panama Canal
and across the Pacific Ocean.

In an interview with the Tribune in the
aft cabin of the Diament, Radomski said
he built the yacht himself in the grounds
of the Moszezenica state-owned coal
mine in the north of Poland. It took him

and some of his co-workers some seven |

years to build the vessel, which is equip-
ped with a 65 h.p. Lafiand auxiliary
diesel engine. It is a sailing vessel with
two masts which when under full sail
carries four sails.

Radomski revealed that, aside from
Kuczera, he has had a complete change-
over of crew three times since leaving his
country. This was because most of his
crew members could only stay on the
boat for a few months before they had to
return to their jobs or studies. His first
crew were members, like himself, of the
Gorniczy Yacht Club in Poland. The
vessel has accommodation for nine per-
sons.

Radomski, who is 42 years old, is re-
tired having worked in the coal mines for
some 25 years. Under Polish labor law,
all persons working in coal mines for 25
years are then allowed to retire and re-
ceive full retirement benefits.

When asked what was his most excit-
ing experience of the voyage so far,
Radomski said that it was undoubtedly
the time when they were stranded in a
lagoon for some three months in the Red
Sea near the Ethiopian port of Assab.

Speaking in the clear English which all

TRIBUNE PHOTO — NORMAN FARIA

Retired Polish miner Terzy Radomski (I ) with Bernard Kuczera stop off in Barbados

as part of their seven year global voyage by sea.

Polish youngsters learn at secondary
school, the Polish seafarer recounted
how a storm blew the Diament onto a
reef, where they were left high and dry
for three days before the waves finally
pushed the boat over the reef into a la-
goon between the reef and the shore.
“Being surrounded by the reef, there
was no way the boat with its deep keel
needed for sailing, could get back to deep
open water. We therefore had to spend
some 67 days digging with our bare hands
acanal in the reef for us to get back out,”’

he said.

Radomski, who is married to a teacher
and has two daughters and a son, expects
to be away from his homeland for three
more years. He termed the way he is
travelling ‘‘a cheap, educational and
rewarding’ way of getting to know other
people’s cultures, adding that it could
never be undertaken by conventional
means like airplanes. However, he
recommended that only those who know
and respect the sea well should go on an
ocean voyage in a small yacht.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 11, 1984 e 5

Lae RS ae