Thursday, May 19, 2011

Soviets behind 1981 attempt on Polish Pope's life, file suggests

A Polish daily claims it has unearthed new evidence 'confirming' the KGB masterminded the shooting.

The question of exactly who ordered Turkish sniper Mehmet Ali Agca to make an assassination attempt on the life of  Pope John Paul II in Vatican City on May 13, 1981, has long exercised the minds of conspiracy theorists.

Mehmet Ali Agca, whose bullets seriously injured the Pope, was given a life sentence but it has never been ascertained exactly who, if anyone, he was working for.

Now, however, an influential Polish daily claims it can shed light on the affair.

Rzeczpospolita says its has discovered a hitherto unseen document in the Institute of National Remembrance, which it says “confirms” that the Soviets were involved in the assassination attempt.

According to the daily, a document from the Ministry of Interior of the People's Republic of Poland quotes persons associated with West German security services as saying that Mehmet Ali Agca was only a puppet of the KGB, which they describe as the main “inspirational and organizational force” behind the attempt.

The same document quotes sources who assert that the assassination attempt was aimed at preventing the Pope from coming to Poland for the funeral of the Polish prelate Stefan Wyszyński, who died on May 28, 1981.

"The visit of John Paul II in Warsaw for the funeral of prelate Wyszyński would give a driving force to the national awareness of Poles and this is why the Pope was supposed to be eliminated from the game," a West German source was quoted as saying in the document, parts of which were published by Rzeczpospolita.

Source