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WORLD ———

By FRED WEIR and MARK SYDNEY

The judicial showcase in Rome featuring Papal as-
Sailant Mehmet Ali Agca and supposed ‘‘Bulgarian con-
hection’’ kingpin Sergei Antonov, has degenerated from
the ‘trial of the century”’ into the joke of the year.

The trial began with star witness Agca declaring to the
assembled press, ‘“‘I am Jesus Christ. 1am omnipotent. I
announce the end of the world”’. :

Agca’s courtroom outbursts come as no surprise to
those who have followed the trail of this bizarre, contra-
dictory personality from his origins as a terrorist in Tur-
key’s neo-fascist Gray Wolves to the Cold War tragi-
comedy now being enacted in a Rome courthouse.

Western sources allege Agca fell into the clutches of
the Bulgarian ‘‘secret service’, which groomed him, and
paid him, to kill the Pope. Bulgaria’s ‘‘masters’’, the
Soviet KGB, these sources claim, were upset about
€vents then unfolding in the Pope’s homeland, Poland,
and they wanted to prevent the Pontiff from interfering
to help the Solidarnosc trade union.

This highly colorful theory has been adopted by the
Italian prosecutor. The sole witness and source of evi-
dence for it is ... Mehmet Ali Agca!

What is extremely curious about the case is that Agca
Said nothing about any ‘‘Bulgarian connection’’ until
after the charge had already surfaced from CIA-con-
nected sources.

It was then that Agca, in prison, began to ‘‘confess’’ to
being involved with Antonov. The Italian prosecutor
admits that prior to this, Agca had several visitors, in-
Cluding American, Turkish and Italian intelligence of-
ficers, but insists that Agca ‘‘was not coached”’ in his
Story.

Agca’s credibility as a witness had been under attack
long before his strange courtroom antics began three
weeks ago. As the Washington Posts’s Michael Dobbs
has noted, “‘Agca can be shown to have lied literally
hundreds of times to judges both in his native Turkey and
in Italy’. Given his track record, there is a better chance
that Agca’s claim of being “‘Jesus Christ reincarnated’’ is
true, than of there being any veracity in the bizarre and
convoluted ‘*Bulgarian connection” story.

Some of the problems with Agca’s current ‘‘ Bulgarian
connection”’:

e The claim that the Bulgarians hired Agca to kill the
Pope because of events in Poland cannot be reconciled
with the documented fact that Mehmet Ali Agca first
threatened to kill John Paul in November 1979, shortly
after his escape from a Turkish prison: This at a time
when Agca had never yet been to Bulgaria, and Solidar-
nosc did not exist. No one could have predicted the
turbulent events that would occur almost a year later in

¥
i

ROMAN CIRCUS: Courtroom of Italy’s ‘‘Trial of the Century” stumbling from fiasco to fiasco.

witness, self-proclaimed Jesus Christ.

Photo top right: CIA’s star

“Bulgarian connection’ self-destructs

Poland — so how could this be Agca’s reason for want-
ing to shoot the Pope?

e There is no witness to the ‘‘ Bulgarian connection”
except Agca himself. All others who admit to being
involved with him — such as Omer Bagci who supplied
the gun— turn out to be Turkish Gray Wolves who know
nothing of any Bulgarians.

e Agca has again claimed that ‘‘the order to kill the
Pope came from the Soviet embassy in Sofia’’. In his
original testimony, he cited meeting “‘a first secretary of
the Soviet embassy,”’ a certain Malenkov or Milenkov,
in Sofia in July 1980. Later he denied it, saying that he
made the whole story up. Now he has changed his mind
again, claiming he did in fact meet the Soviet official. Has
somebody coached him to start pointing the finger again?

e Sergei Antonov, the Bulgarian airline official whom
Agca finally identified — after many alterations and
contradictions in testimony — as the major Bulgarian
“‘agent’’ with whom he conspired, does not share a
common language with Agca. Although Agca claims that
they met several times together — alone — and planned
the assassination attempt, Antonov speaks only Bul-
garian and halting Italian. In 1981, Agca spoke only
Turkish and a bit of English. Today, in the courtroom,
they need translators to understand one another. How
did they conspire?

A thorough analysis of the Papal plot by media expert
Edward S. Herman and others in the Spring 1985 edition
of Covert Action Information Bulletin concludes that:
‘‘The case is not only unsupported by evidence or logic,
but it is actually ludicrous in its shifting Comic Book
level scenarios and blatantly ideological underpinning.
The biases and hidden premises of the Western media
and Italian courts have caused them to treat with respect
a case that would have been laughable if it were not
politically serviceable and supported by power. It is also
sustainable because of the public’s willingness to believe
anything evil of the enemy.

“‘Whatever the explanation, the lack of critical analy-
sis in the press and the breakdown of the legal process in
Italy have helped produce and maintain a case that, in
our view, is based on anon-Bulgarian conspiracy. Sergei
Antonov is a victim of this conspiracy and should be
regarded by the world at large as a political prisoner’’.

The trial, as tk _ say; continues.

International Focus

Tom Morris

ee

for New York governor in

Wool of bat, 1982, but today takes to the
Tongue of dog road with the’ Reagan Doc-

Picture this concoction: an
Angolan South African De-
fence Force agent, an Afghan
‘colonel’? direct from
Washington, a Laotian “guer-
nila” flown in from Thailand,
a Nicaraguan contra and an
American millionaire armed
with a letter from Ronald Rea-
gan.

They, along with some
white, conservative South
Africans gathered last week in
a jungle camp in southern An-
gola which they term the coun-
try’s ‘‘provisional capital’’.

The millionaire, Lewis

hrman, ran unsuccessfully

A microcosm of the world’s
garbage

trine. He bankrolled this meet-
ing of killers and, in his speech,
said they were part of “‘the
second stage of the American
revolution’. Then each was
handed a copy of the U.S.
Declaration of Independence.

Each then signed a pact
forming the ‘“Democratic
International’’ which will have
its headquarters (where else?)
in Washington.

Here we see a microcosm of
the world’s garbage, united by
a rich pal of Reagan’s. Quite
fitting.

The cabal recalls a dark
cave. In the middle, a cauldron
boiling. Enter three witches:
Fillet of fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog, _
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s
sting,
Lizard’s leg,
wing...

As did Macbeth, these
schemers, too, will see the
witches prophecy of a nasty
end fulfilled.

Voice of sanity
from Bombay
P. Sainath is deputy-editor

of Blitz, one of Bombay's
dailies, with a readership of six

and howlet’s

million. In addition to being a
crack columnist for his paper,
Sainath is an expert on the
complex issues of the role of
the media and has lectured and
debated in many countries, in-
cluding Canada.

What a pleasure last week to
receive a note from him (we
had met in September in Delhi
at a journalists’ meeting) and
find enclosed a supplement
produced by Sainath on the
occasion of the the 40th
anniversary of the defeat of
fascism.

The supplement (cover on
right) is a 30-page tabloid-size
photo-essay on the history of
wars, ending with an impas-
sioned appeal for peace in this
nuclear age. *‘ ... In the 5,500
years of history, humankind
had experienced just 292 years
of peace,”’ he writes.

“Tn that period nearly 15,000
wars, big and small, have rav->
aged the earth ... There have

been six-day wars, a 30-year
war and even a 100-year war.”

The Blitz supplement leads
the reader through a chronicle
of death and destruction —
civil wars, imperialist wars, na-
tional liberation struggles, the

war against fascism, Vietnam. -

It examines women and chil-
dren as victims; apartheid and
nazi atrocities. Poverty and
hunger brought on by the arms
spending, “‘How the other half
dies’’, looks at the obscenity of
the Pentagon’s $28-million per
hour budget.

But it’s the qualitative and
quantitative advent of nuclear
power, killing 750-million
people in the first hours, that
Sainath takes dead aim at. He
talks about the so-called
‘‘Soviet threat’’, the rationale
for the suicidal path chosen by
Washington, and reveals its
bogus nature.

Do you think having six mil-
lion readers receive this mes-

CTIPJAGAINST WAR Ty

H

sage is enough for Sainath?
Not a bit.

In his letter he says he is re-
printing it for wider circulation
and asks if Tribune readers and
friends of peace might be in-
terested in copies.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JUNE 19, 1985 e 9