Soviet Union was behind attempt to kill Pope, commission says

AN ITALIAN parliamentary commission has concluded “beyond any reasonable doubt” that the Soviet Union was behind the 1981 attempt to kill Pope John Paul II.

It claims to have solved an enduring mystery that the pontiff himself addressed in his last days.

A draft report made available yesterday said the commission held that the Pope was a danger to the Soviet bloc because of his support for the Solidarity labour movement in his native Poland. Solidarity was the first free trade union in communist eastern Europe.

It said Moscow was alarmed because “Poland was the main military base of the Warsaw Pact, its main supply lines and troop concentrations were there.”

“This commission believes, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the leaders of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate the Pope Karol Wojtyla,” said a draft of the commission’s report.

Karol Wojtyla was John Paul’s Polish name.

The draft has no bearing on any judicial investigations, which have long been closed.

If the commission approves the report in its final form, it would be the first time an official body has blamed the Soviet Union.

The report also said a photograph shows that a Bulgarian man acquitted of involvement in the May 13, 1981, assassination attempt was in St Peter’s Square when the pontiff was shot by Mehmet Ali Agca.

The Bulgarian secret service was allegedly working for Soviet military intelligence, but the Italian court held that the evidence was insufficient to convict the Bulgarians in the plot.

Agca, a Turk, has changed his story often and investigators said it was never clear who he was working for. He initially blamed the Soviets.

The Interfax news agency carried a denial from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman Boris Labusov. “All assertions of any kind of participation in the attempt on the Pope’s life by Soviet special services, including foreign intelligence, are completely absurd,” he said.

In 1991, then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev denied KGB complicity.

The Italian report said Soviet military intelligence - and not the KGB - was responsible.

Agca served 19 years in an Italian prison for shooting the Pope and then 5½ years in Turkey for murdering journalist Abdi Ipekci.