Mehmet Ali Ağca

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Mehmet Ali Ağca (born January 9, 1958) is a Turkish assassin who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981. After serving 19 years of incarceration in Italy, he was deported to Turkey, where he is serving another life sentence for a murder he committed in 1979 (see below). Ağca has described himself as a mercenary with no political orientation, although he is known to have been a member of the Turkish ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves organization.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Grey Wolves involvement 3 Assassination attempt on the Pope 3.1 Prison time, release, and rearrest 3.2 Relationship with Pope John Paul 3.3 Motivations for the assassination attempt 3.4 A Vatican connection? 3.5 On Pope Benedict XVI 4 Cultural references 5 References 6 Other news articles 7 See also 8 External links

[edit] Early life

Ağca was born in İsmailli village, Hekimhan district, Malatya Province in Turkey. As a youth, he became a petty criminal and a member of street gangs in his home town. He became a smuggler between Turkey and Bulgaria.

He is believed to have then gone to Syria where he received two months of training in weaponry and terrorist tactics. He claims this was undertaken as a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and paid for by the Bulgarian government, although this has been questioned.

[edit] Grey Wolves involvement

After this training he went to work for the far-right Turkish Grey Wolves, who were at the time destabilizing Turkey, which led to a military coup in 1980. Opinions differ on whether the ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves were being used by the CIA or the Bulgarian Secret Service. According to the Monde diplomatique newspaper, they were infiltrated and manipulated by Gladio "stay-behind" networks, a NATO clandestine structure.^[1]

On February 1, 1979 in Istanbul, under orders from the Grey Wolves, he murdered Abdi İpekçi, editor of the moderate left-wing newspaper Milliyet. He was caught due to an informant and was sentenced to life in prison. After serving six months, he escaped with the help of Abdullah Çatlı, second-in-command of the Grey Wolves and a prominent Gladio operative, and fled to Bulgaria, which was a base of operation for the Turkish mafia. According to reporter Lucy Komisar, Mehmet Ali Ağca had worked with Abdullah Çatlı in this 1979 assassination, who "then reportedly helped organize Ağca's escape from an Istanbul military prison, and some have suggested Çatlı was even involved in the Pope's assassination attempt". According to Reuters, Ağca had "escaped with suspected help from sympathizers in the security services".^[2] Lucy Komisar added that at the scene of the Mercedes-Benz crash where Çatlı died, he was found with a passport under the name of "Mehmet Özbay" — an alias also used by Mehmet Ali Ağca.^[3]

[edit] Assassination attempt on the Pope

Beginning in August 1980 Ağca began criss-crossing the Mediterranean region, changing passports and identities, perhaps to hide his point of origin in Sofia, Bulgaria. He entered Rome on May 10, 1981, coming by train from Milan.

According to Ağca's later testimony, he met with three accomplices in Rome, one a fellow Turk and two Bulgarians, with operation being commanded by Zilo Vassilev, the Bulgarian military attaché in Italy. He said that he was assigned this mission by Turkish mafioso Bechir Celenk in Bulgaria. Le Monde diplomatique, however, has alleged that the assassination attempt was organized by Abdullah Çatlı "in exchange for the sum of 3 million marks", paid by Bechir Celenk to the Grey Wolves.^[4]

According to Ağca, the plan was for him and the back-up gunman Oral Çelik to open fire in St. Peter's Square and escape to the Bulgarian embassy under the cover of the panic generated by a small explosion. On May 13 they sat in the square, writing postcards waiting for the Pope to arrive. When the Pope passed, Ağca fired several shots and critically wounded him, but was grabbed by spectators and prevented from finishing the assassination or escaping. Four bullets hit John Paul II, two of them lodging in his lower intestine, the others hitting his left hand and right arm. Two bystanders were also hit. Çelik panicked and fled without setting off his bomb or opening fire.

[edit] Prison time, release, and rearrest

Ağca was sentenced, in July 1981, to life imprisonment in Italy for the assassination attempt, but was pardoned by president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi in June 2000. He was then extradited to Turkey, where he was imprisoned for the 1979 murder of Abdi İpekçi and two bank raids carried out in the 1970s. Despite a plea for early release in November 2004, a Turkish court announced that he would not be eligible for release until 2010. Nonetheless, he was released on parole on January 12, 2006.^[5][6]

Ağca had been sentenced to life in prison for the murder, which amounts to 36 years under Turkish law. He had served less than six months in Turkish prison before he escaped. Mustafa Demirbağ, his lawyer, explained his release as a combination of amnesty and penal reform: an amnesty in 2000 deducted 10 years from his time, the court then deducted his 20 years in the Italian prison based on a new article in the penal code, and he was then eligible to be paroled based on good behaviour. However, a report from the French AFP news agency stated that "The Turkish judicial authorities still haven't explained exactly which legal resources he had access to", and former minister of Justice Hikmet Sami Türk, in government at the time of Ağca's extradition, claimed that, from a legal viewpoint, his liberation was a "serious mistake" at best, and that he should have not been freed before 2012.^[7][8]

However, on January 20, 2006, the Turkish Supreme Court ruled that his time served in Italy could not be deducted from his Turkish sentence and he was returned to jail. ^[2]

[edit] Relationship with Pope John Paul

Following the shooting, Pope John Paul II asked people to "pray for my brother (Ağca), whom I have sincerely forgiven." In 1983, he and Ağca met and spoke privately at the prison where Ağca was being held. The Pope was also in touch with Ağca's family over the years, meeting his mother in 1987 and his brother a decade later.

Ağca was quoted as saying "To me [the Pope] was the incarnation of all that is capitalism."

In early February 2005, during the Pope's illness, Ağca sent a letter to the Pope wishing him well and also warning him that the world would end soon. When the Pope died on April 2, 2005, Ağca's brother Adnan gave an interview in which he said that Mehmet Ali and his entire family were grieving, and that the Pope had been a great friend to them. On April 5, 2005 CNN stated that Ağca would want to visit the Pope's funeral on April 8, 2005. However, Turkish authorities rejected his request to leave prison to attend.

[edit] Motivations for the assassination attempt

Originally Ağca claimed to be a member of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), but they denied any ties to him. He later stated that in Sofia, he was once approached by the Bulgarian Secret Service and Turkish mafiosi, who offered him three million German mark to assassinate the Pope. The Bulgarian Secret Service was allegedly instructed by the KGB to assassinate the Pope because of his support of Poland's Solidarity movement. However, Ağca has given multiple conflicting statements on the assassination at different times. Attorney Antonio Marini stated: "Ağca has manipulated all of us, telling hundreds of lies, continually changing versions, forcing us to open tens of different investigations".^[9]

Some people, notably Edward Herman and Michael Parenti, felt Ağca's story was dubious, noting that Ağca made no claims of Bulgarian involvement until he had been isolated in solitary confinement and visited by Italian Military Intelligence (SISMI) agents.

Soon after the shooting, Sergei Antonov, a Bulgarian working in Rome for Balkan Air, was arrested based on Ağca's testimony and accused of being the Bulgarian agent who masterminded the plot. In 1986, after a three-year trial, he was found not guilty. Ağca's testimony was often contradictory and occasionally descended into bizarre ranting, including claims of being Jesus Christ.

The Bulgarian secret services have always protested their alleged involvement and argued that Ağca's story was an anti-Communist plant placed by the Grey Wolves, the Italian secret service, and the CIA - all three of whom had cooperated in NATO's secret Gladio network.^[10] Gladio was at the time involved in Italy's strategy of tension, also followed in Turkey by Counter-Guerrilla, the Turkish branch of Gladio. The Pope's assassination would hereafter have taken place in this frame. Edward Herman has argued that Michael Ledeen, who was involved in the Iran-Contra Affair and had alleged ties to the Italian P2 masonic lodge also linked to Gladio, was employed by the CIA to propagate the Bulgarian theory.^[11] Indeed, the Monde diplomatique alleged that Abdullah Çatlı had organized the assassination attempt "in exchange for the sum of 3 million German mark" for the Grey Wolves.^[12] In Rome, Catli declared to the judge in 1985 "that he had been contacted by the BND, the German intelligence agency (at the time it was the West German agency as this was before East Germany and West Germany reunited), which would have promised him a nice sum of money if he implicated the Russian and Bulgarian services in the assassination attempt against the Pope". According to colonel Alparslan Türkes, the founder of the Grey Wolves, "Catli has cooperated in the frame of a secret service working for the good of the state".^[13]

On September 25, 1991, former CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman (now Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy) revealed that his colleagues, following hierarchical orders, had falsified their analysis in order to support the accusation. He declared to the US Senate intelligence committee that "the CIA hadn't any proof" concerning this alleged "Bulgarian connection"^[13]

According to Ferdinando Imposimato, an Italian prosecutor in charge of the assassination investigation, Ağca has confirmed the KGB and the Bulgarian involvement during their many private conversations in 1997-2000, tying it to the mysterious 1998 murder of Colonel Alois Estermann, a Swiss Guard. Ferdinando Imposimato has alleged a link with the East German secret service, the Stasi; however, Markus Wolf, former Stasi spymaster, has denied any links.^[14] Furthermore, during his visit to Bulgaria in May 2002, Pope John Paul II declared that he had never believed in the Bulgarian connection.

In March 2006, an Italian parliamentary commission supported the Bulgarian theory. The "Mitrokhin commission", as it was known, was opened up after KGB agent Vasili Mitrokhin's 1992 defection to the West, and was led by Senator Paolo Guzzanti, a member of Berlusconi's Forza Italia. The report concluded that "leaders of the former Soviet Union were behind the assassination attempt", alleging that "the leadership of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate Pope John Paul" because of his support for Solidarity, relaying "this decision to the military secret services" (and not the KGB).^[15] The report's claims were based on recent computer analysis of photographs that purported to demonstrate Antonov's presence in St Peter's Square during the shooting and on information brought by French judge Jean-Louis Bruguières. Both Russia and Bulgaria condemned the report. ""For Bulgaria, this case closed with the court decision in Rome in March 1986," Foreign Ministry spokesman Dimitar Tsanchev said, while also recalling the Pope's comments during his May 2002 visit to Bulgaria.^[16] Senator Guzzanti said that the commission had decided to re-open the report's chapter on the assassination attempt in 2005, after the Pope wrote about it in his last book, Memory and Identity: Conversations Between Millenniums. The Pope wrote that he was convinced the shooting was not Ağca's initiative and that "someone else masterminded it and someone else commissioned it".

[edit] A Vatican connection?

On June 26, 2000 Pope John Paul II released the "Third Secret of Fatima" in which he claimed that Ağca's assassination attempt was the fulfillment of this Secret. Some doubt the Church's full disclosure of the contents of this Secret, believing that it actually predicted the Apocalypse. While in prison on remand, Ağca was widely reported to have developed an obsession with Fatima and during the trial claimed that he was the second coming of Jesus Christ and called on the Vatican to release the Third Secret.

On March 31, 2005, just prior to the Pope's death, Ağca gave an interview to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. He claimed to be working on a book about the assassination attempt. La Repubblica quoted Ağca claiming at length that he had accomplices in the Vatican who helped him with the assassination attempt, saying "the devil is inside Vatican's wall". He also said:

"Many calculating politicians are worried about what revealing the complete truth would do. Some of them fear that the Vatican will have a spiritual collapse like the Berlin Wall. Let me ask, why don't the CIA, the Sismi, the Sisde and other intelligence agencies reveal the truth about the Orlandi case?

Q: They say it's because there is still some uncertainty in the Emanuela Orlandi case.

Ağca: In the 1980's, certain Vatican supporters believed that I was the new messiah and to free me they organized all the intrigue about Emanuela Orlandi and the other incidents they won't reveal."^[17]

Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, disappeared at age 15 on June 22, 1983. Anonymous phone calls offered her release in exchange for the release of Ağca. Archbishop Paul Marcinkus was alleged to be part of the kidnapping, although no charges were ever laid.

A week after this interview, Turkish Weekly reported Ağca denying having made such claims.^[18]

[edit] On Pope Benedict XVI

After Pope Benedict XVI was assailed by the Muslim world for quoting a Byzantine-era text that spoke ill of the prophet Muhammed, Ali Ağca wrote a letter to the Pope from jail warning him to cancel his planned trip to Turkey in November 2006. In the letter, he stated:

Pope Ratzinger listen to someone who knows these things very well. Your life is in danger. You absolutely must not come to Turkey. Pope Benedict you must know that between 1980 and 2000 I was in contact with various Western intelligence services and with the Vatican. In those twenty years I learnt many things and I came into possession of many classified secrets. For your own welfare you must make a grand gesture of honour and resign. Then you must return to your native land (Germany) and in your place an Italian cardinal can be elected Pope, possibly Tettamanzi or Bertone. Then the Vatican should become a centre of peace and fraternity. The world has a need of this it does not need hatred and vendetta.[19]

[edit] Cultural references

• Ağca's shooting of the Pope was a major plot element in Tom Clancy's 2002 novel Red Rabbit, though he is not mentioned by name. The book details the alleged KGB involvement in the assassination attempt.
• Frederick Forsyth's novel The Fourth Protocol also uses the KGB theory.

[edit] References

[edit] Other news articles

• "Turkey 'to release Pope gunman'" - BBC News, January 8, 2006
• "Time of assassins" - Washington Times, April 5, 2005

[edit] See also

• Abdullah Çatlı
• de:Alois Estermann, Swiss Guard assassinated in 1998 in mysterious circumstances.
• Emanuela Orlandi, "disappeared" in the 1980s, maybe in relation to Gladio and Propaganda Due; Archbishop Paul Marcinkus has been alleged to be part of the kidnapping, which may have been done in order to press the Pope to ask for Mehmet Ali Ağca's liberation to the Italian state (according to Mehmet Ali's 2005 interview to La Repubblica).
• Grey Wolves

[edit] External links

• Mehmet Ali Ağca at NNDB
• Timeline