Footnote to history: here's more evidence that the USSR was in fact behind the 1981 plot to kill the Pope.
An Italian parliamentary commission has concluded "beyond any reasonable doubt" that the Soviet Union was behind the 1981 shooting of Pope John Paul II, the first time an official body has blamed the Kremlin for the failed assassination.... The Italian report said Soviet military intelligence and not the KGB was responsible.The draft has no bearing on any judicial investigations, which have long been closed. If the commission approves the report in its final form at a meeting Tuesday, it will be the first time an official body has blamed the Soviet Union.
The Italian commission was originally established to investigate any KGB penetration of Italy during the Cold War.
The commission president, Sen. Paolo Guzzanti, said he decided to investigate the 1981 shooting after John Paul said in his book "Memory and Identity: Conversations Between Millenniums" that "someone else planned it, someone else commissioned it." The book came out weeks before the pope's death in April.
The passage drew immediate interest because during John Paul's 2002 visit to Bulgaria, he appeared to put the issue to rest, saying he never believed there was a Bulgarian connection to Agca.
The report said the commission considered all the evidence gathered during trials in Italy as well as information from a French anti-terrorism judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere. That information apparently stemmed from the French investigation of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, a terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, held in France since his capture in Sudan in 1994.
After decades of ambiguity, deception, and sifting of evidence, the main question seems now to be whether it was the KGB or the GRU. Brave Claire Sterling will be vindicated, sooner or later.
Posted by Alan at March 5, 2006 10:42 AM