Home | Community | Message Board


This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
InvisibleRogues_Pierre
Stranger
 User Gallery

Registered: 03/03/06
Posts: 99
Soviet Union blamed in shooting of pope
    #5361164 - 03/03/06 10:59 AM (17 years, 10 months ago)

Soviet Union blamed in shooting of pope

By Victor L. Simpson
The Associated Press

ROME — 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 draft report said the pope was considered a threat to the Soviet bloc because of his support for the Solidarity labor movement in his native Poland. Solidarity was the first free trade union in communist Eastern Europe.

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

Russian Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman Boris Labusov called the accusation "absurd."

"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, according to the Interfax news agency.

The commission report 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 ... ," the document said.

The draft has no bearing on any judicial investigations, which have long been closed. The commission will consider Tuesday whether to approve the report in its final form.

The report also said a photograph shows that Sergei Antonov, 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 the evidence was insufficient to convict the Bulgarians in the plot.

Antonov's lawyer, Giuseppe Consolo, said the photograph was a case of mistaken identity. He said the man in the photo came forward during the investigation and was a U.S. tourist.

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.

In Bulgaria, Foreign Ministry spokesman Dimiter Tsanchev said the case was closed with the Italian court decision in March 1986.

Copyright ? 2006 The Seattle Times Company

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002840730_pope03.html


--------------------


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1


Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* Soviet Union/Downfall of Communism/Actions in the Middle Eas TrueBrode 792 10 11/07/03 02:43 AM
by zeronio
* The fall of the Soviet Union... good or bad?
( 1 2 all )
Baby_Hitler 1,750 30 06/08/04 02:36 AM
by ivi
* The effort to make unions disappear carbonhoots 957 13 10/21/03 11:03 PM
by carbonhoots
* State of the Union address 1992 - hypocrisy/dishonesty 2004 Xochitl 1,007 7 04/29/04 11:00 PM
by silversoul7
* American Union? Baby_Hitler 761 11 06/01/05 08:19 AM
by J4S0N
* Was the U.S. the only country that was afraid of the Soviet Union? Baby_Hitler 321 1 09/19/05 07:30 AM
by Young_but_cool
* Police shoot demonstrators mm. 2,660 15 10/12/18 06:26 PM
by christopera
* Bush against armed pilots, says shoot down planes! Ellis Dee 806 3 10/13/01 06:17 PM
by Captain Jack

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: Enlil, ballsalsa
265 topic views. 2 members, 6 guests and 6 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.024 seconds spending 0.007 seconds on 13 queries.