Soviets 'ordered Pope shooting' BBC

[kpete]

Soviets 'ordered Pope shooting'

The Pope was shot while riding in an open car

An Italian parliamentary commission has concluded that the former Soviet Union was behind the 1981 assassination attempt on the late Pope John Paul II.

The head of the commission, Paolo Guzzanti, said it was sure beyond "reasonable doubt" that Soviet leaders ordered the shooting.

Turkish national Mehmet Ali Agca, now 48, shot the Pope in St Peter's Square on 13 May 1981, hitting him four times.

Agca never gave a motive, and mystery has continued to surround the shooting.

A link between Agca and Bulgarian agents, and through them to the Soviet Union's KGB, has been the subject of speculation over the years.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4767652.stm

[pretzel4gore]

1. the fascist busheviks ordered 911

nt

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

4. Evidence (at least circumstantial) for this...

...continues to mount. It's why BushCo and the Neocons who planned and carried it out simply cannot, under any circumstances, afford to lose hold on the reigns of power---it's just to dangerous for them. The midterm and '08 elections are sure to be stolen, and it will become, in the very near future, very dangerous (Halliburton's concentration camps coming along nicely) to challenge these people in any way. New Zealand is really starting to look awfully good.

[htuttle]

2. This totally ignores Agca's connection to the Grey Wolves

And from the article, it seems like the main piece of evidence they have is a photo of one Bulgarian agent somewhere in St. Peter's Square at the time the shooting took place.

Do they have more evidence than that? The article doesn't mention any. :shrug:

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

5. They've probably just been reading Claire Sterling

Worked for Casey :)

[Warpy]

3. That doesn't make any sense at all.

I can see it if he were still in Poland, a major pain in their asses. However, they made few attempts against him beyond the usual harassment of any citizen who spoke out against them, jailing him but not executing him.

Once he'd been kicked upstairs to Rome, he was responsible for a helluva lot more than Poland, so he was largely out of their hair.

This strikes me as the investigational competence the Italians are famous for (yeah, that's a mild dig). The Italians are so good at so many other things that perhaps they needed to turn the investigation over to an international body since it had been an international crime, involving a Turkish man and the nutty (at the time) Bulgarian government.

It just makes no sense that the Soviets would involve themselves in such a high profile crime against such a beloved public figure who was no longer a huge problem to them. They may have been an oligarchy and they may have been wrong about many things, but they weren't stupid.