AGCA RETRACTED PART OF TESTIMONY ON BULGARIANS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505110025-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 27, 2010
• Sequence Number: 25
• Publication Date: July 14, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/27: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505110025-4
ARTICLE APPEARED LOS ANGELES TIMES
ON PAGE 6, Sec. 1 11+ July 1981+
c a e tr cam d u^
rart of Testimony
? 1
t m ria s
Among other things he gave the
telephone numbers of the Rome
offices of the Bulgarian state air-
line, Balkan Air, where Antonov
tutors' report implicating Bulgaria was assistant station manager, and
in the plot that led Turkish assassin said he had visited the offices. He
"ehmet All Agca to shoot Pope also said he had visited Antonov's
John Paul II. discloses that Agca apartment on several occasions,
By DON A. SCHANCHE?
Times Staff Writer
ROME-The Italian state prose-
.concerning one of his alleged Bul-
garian accomplices.
has retracted some of his testimony
Albano concluded in his report that kan Air; he had never visited the
the bulk of the 'Turkish assassin's airline's office in the Villa Gorizia,
confessions had checked out and of which he had memorized the
the case against the accused But telephone numbers, thanks to a
garians and Turks was strong. little strategem."
enough, even though based almost The report did not delve into the
entirely on Agca's testimony, to go' question of how Agca, in view of
to trial. - his retractions, was able to offer
Id-the Albano account of the details of Antonov's personal and
case, Agca allegedly was recruited business life.
?by..Bulgarian secret service agents, Without specifically making a
with help from the "Grey Wolves" connection between the two
Turkish terrorist organization and events, Albano noted in his report
the. Turkish Mafia, to kill the Pope. that "as coincidence has it, young .
-To-lend credibility to his confes- Emanuela Orlandi disappeared just
sions to Martella, which began in at this time (of Agca's retraction.)"
May, 1982, in a Rome prison where The 15-year-old Orlandi girl;
Agca is serving a life sentence for daughter of a Vatican employee,
his attack on the Pope, the Turkish vanished on June 22, 1983, and
assassin volunteered numerous subsequent calls and letters from
personal details about his three '.'people who have an interest in the
alleged Bulgarian accomplices. .
ity raised by the Agca retractions, (Antonov) was employed by Bal-
:have already been disclosed. But
'the- earlier accounts have not in-
cluded Albano's report of Agca's
retraction during an interrogation
.bk-investigating magistrate Ilario
Martella on June 28,1983.
Despite the problems of credibil-
;four accused Turkish accomplices,
including May 10, three days before
the assassination attempt, de-
scribed itin some.detail and said he
4 '.study. of the. secret 76-page had met Antonov's wife, Rossitza,
report by Judge Antonio Albano, a there..
copy of which was obtained by The According to the Albano report,
Times, has shown that Agca re- virtually the entire state case
tracted elements of his testimony against the alleged conspirators
concerning Sergei Ivanov Anto- rests on Agca's believability, which
nov,. the Bulgarian airline execu- the prosecutor said was fully sup-
tive"who has been held in Rome ported by Martella's painstaking
since November, 1982, for complic- investigation that confirmed many
ity in the plot that resulted in the such intimate details about Anto-
wounding of the Pope in St. Peter's nov and the other two Bulgarians.
Square on May 13,1981. But, according to a different
.Many of the details of the Albano section of Albano's report, Agca
:report, which recommended trial retracted some of the testimony in
,for'Antonov and two other alleged June last year, stating that "he had
:Bulgarian secret agents as well as not visited (Antonov's) apartment,
freedom of Agca" offered to swap
her for the Turkish assassin.
Albano's notation implied that
Agca began retracting his story
about Antonov only when it.ap-
peared there might be a chance of
gaining his freedom in exchange for
the Orlandi girl. However, 'no ex-
change was arranged and the girl is
still missing.
The prosecutor acknowledged in
his report that Agca's retraction
was troubling. "Agca-spontane-
ously and without being urged by
anybody, as is his habit during the
investigation-altered in a very
penetrating manner the structure
of proof which had been accumu-
lated up to that time and, in doing
so, set new problems for the inves-
tigators and above all for himself
... Here, once more, the single,
great, complex problem with Agca
re-emerges: his credibility, his re-
liability in relation with a historic
'reality, which is confirmed with
difficulty."
Albano noted that Agca also
retracted another key portion of his
testimony in which he had claimed
that, in addition to the attack on the
Pope, he conspired with the Bul-
garians to kill Lech Walesa when
the Polish Solidarity union leader
visited the Pope in January, 1981.
Reports of the second Agca re-
traction, for which Martella had
sought to indict Agca for "slander..
and self-slander," had appeared
widely in the press before copies of
the Albano report itself began to
leak out last month.
In an attempt to find a reason for
Agca's retractions, Albano wrote,
Continued
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either on the evening of May 10 or
on other occasions; he had never
met Antonov's wife; he knew noth-
ing of her possible presence in
Rome on that date; he had never
known previous to the photograph-
ic recognition (of a picture of
Antonov) on Nov. 8, 1982, that