Law­mak­ers con­clude John Paul II’s stance against com­mu­nism made him a target.

By Tracy Wilkinson

ROME It has per­sisted as one of the most mys­te­ri­ous cases of
inter­na­tional intrigue in recent times: Who shot the pope?

A com­mit­tee of Italy’s Par­lia­ment inves­ti­gat­ing the 1981 attempt to
assas­si­nate John Paul II released its con­clu­sion Thurs­day
that “beyond any rea­son­able doubt” the Soviet Union ordered the
attack that seri­ously wounded the pope as he greeted crowds in St.
Peter’s Square.

The Turk­ish gun­man, Mehmet Ali Agca, was long ago con­demned in the
shoot­ing and served 19 years in jail. But for whom he worked has
never been def­i­nitely estab­lished. His own con­fes­sions have been all
over the map; he has var­i­ously impli­cated the Sovi­ets, the Bul­gar­i­ans
and oth­ers.

Rumors about the intel­lec­tual authors of the attack have cir­cu­lated
for years, but pin­ning it directly and for­mally on the Soviet Union
would be a first.

Sen. Paolo Guz­zanti, pres­i­dent of the par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee, told
reporters that the Soviet mil­i­tary intel­li­gence agency, the
GRU, “took the ini­tia­tive to elim­i­nate” the pope. Accord­ing to
Ital­ian media, the report says the Sovi­ets had decided that John
Paul, a fer­vent anti-communist, had become dan­ger­ous in his out­spo­ken
sup­port for the Sol­i­dar­ity protest move­ment in his native Poland.
Solidarity’s activ­i­ties even­tu­ally helped pre­cip­i­tate the fall of
com­mu­nism there in 1989.

In those Cold War years of intrigue and decep­tion, the shoot­ing of
the pope was tan­gled in a web of secret agents, proxy gun­men and the
life-or-death strug­gle over who would dom­i­nate the world.

Com­mit­tee staff mem­bers said the report was based on evi­dence
pre­sented at a host of Ital­ian tri­als through the years con­nected
with the shoot­ing, includ­ing one that probed the Turk­ish mafia and
another the pur­ported involve­ment of the Bul­gar­ian secret service.

In addi­tion, France’s noted anti-terrorism judge, Jean-Louis
Bruguiere, report­edly shared evi­dence with the Ital­ians that sprang
from the pros­e­cu­tion of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, alias Car­los the
Jackal, the noto­ri­ous ter­ror­ist held in France since his cap­ture in
Africa in 1994.

The com­mit­tee also used new tech­nol­ogy to reex­am­ine a pho­to­graph that
the report con­cludes shows Sergei Antonov, a Bul­gar­ian air­line
exec­u­tive, in St. Peter’s Square near Agca at the time of the
shoot­ing. The man in the pho­to­graph has a heavy mus­tache and is
wear­ing glasses, as though in disguise.

Antonov was one of sev­eral Bul­gar­i­ans put on trial in 1986 for
allegedly orches­trat­ing the shoot­ing; he and the oth­ers were
acquit­ted. Plac­ing him at the scene would bol­ster claims that the
Bul­gar­ian secret ser­vice hired Agca and that it was work­ing at the
behest of the Sovi­ets, the Ital­ians con­tend. It has long been
the­o­rized that the Bul­gar­i­ans were act­ing as agents for the Sovi­ets
in a mur­der plot against the pope.

React­ing to the new Ital­ian report, offi­cials in Moscow and Sofia,
the Bul­gar­ian cap­i­tal, issued strong denials. Boris Labusov,
spokesman for the Russ­ian For­eign Intel­li­gence Ser­vice, suc­ces­sor to
the Soviet-era KGB, said the accu­sa­tion was “com­pletely absurd,“
accord­ing to a dis­patch from the Inter­fax news agency quoted by
Asso­ci­ated Press.

Italy’s find­ings con­sti­tute an impor­tant addi­tion to the his­tor­i­cal
record. But it seemed unlikely that the report would have any effect
on inves­ti­ga­tions closed long ago.

The committee’s report must be approved by the full Par­lia­ment next
week.

If that hap­pens, it would con­sti­tute the first time an offi­cial body
has placed blame for the assas­si­na­tion attempt on the Soviets.

How­ever, a minor­ity report by oppo­si­tion mem­bers of Par­lia­ment is
expected to be released at the same time that may dis­agree with some
of Guzzanti’s find­ings. Other par­tic­i­pants in the probe believed that
the infor­ma­tion they gath­ered was less con­clu­sive than Guz­zanti
indi­cated, a source on the com­mit­tee said. Among other things, the
com­mit­tee inter­viewed pros­e­cu­tors and judges from ear­lier cases.

“All the judges that we heard from left more ques­tions than
cer­tain­ties,” said Nicola Biondo, a com­mit­tee staff researcher.

Guz­zanti, a mem­ber of Prime Min­is­ter Sil­vio Berlusconi’s right-wing
Forza Italia (Go, Italy) party, said he launched the new
inves­ti­ga­tion after John Paul’s last book before his death spoke of
the assas­si­na­tion attempt and his con­vic­tion that some­one beyond Agca
had “mas­ter­minded and com­mis­sioned” the attack.