Mehmet Ali Ağca

Mehmet Ali Ağca (born the January 9th 1958 with Malatya in Turkey) is militant Extrême Turkish right-hand side (the “Gray Loups”) which drew on the pope Jean-Paul II on the Place Saint-Pierre from Rome, the May 13rd 1981.

After the attack, Jean-Paul II asked faithful to request for “ his brother (Ağca), with whom I sincerely forgave ”. In 1983, Jean-Paul II and Ağca met with the Italian prison where this one was held, and spoke in deprived. According to an article of United Close, the pope kept the contact, until his death, with the family of Ağca. He even met the mother and the brother of Ağca one decade later.

In 2000, Ağca is transferred in prison in Turkey for crimes which it committed on the Turkish ground before going to Italy. The April 27th 2002, the president of the Turkish Republic Ahmet Necdet Sezer had put her veto at the law of amnesty which would have made it possible to cancel the sorrow of Mehmet Ali Ağca, initially condemned to the life imprisonment (sorrow reduced thereafter to ten years of imprisonment) for the murder in 1979 of the publication director of the daily newspaper Milliyet, Abdi İpekçi. It was released during one week beginning 2006.

Its life

In its youth, Ağca, orphan of father since 1966, was a little scoundrel and belonged to a gang of street of its own city. He was later smuggler in the lucrative trade between the Turkey and the Bulgaria. He went then in Syria where he accepted two months of drive in armament and on the terrorist tactics. He affirmed that had been paid by the Bulgarian government. After this drive, he worked for the extreme Turkish line, the gray Loups, which at the time led with the destabilization of the country and the introduction of a military government. Opinions divergent as for knowing if the gray Wolves were used by the CIA or by the Bulgarian Secret services for this purpose; according to diplomatic Le Monde , they were handled by Gladio, the networks " stay-behind" NATO. Ağca describes itself as a mercenary without political orientation which was ready to do anything for money. The 1979, on the orders of the gray Wolves, it killed Abdi İpekçi, editor association of “Milliyet”, a famous daily newspaper of center-left in Turkey. It was stopped thanks to an adviser and was condemned to the life imprisonment. He managed to flee with the assistance of Abdullah Çatlı, number 2 of the gray Wolves.

Plot against the pope

For more information, to see the article: Attempted murder of the Pope of May 13rd, 1981

Ağca flees towards Bulgaria. He declared thereafter that he was approximate with Sofia by the Bulgarian Secret services, which offered to him three million marks to assassinate the pope. The Bulgarian ones accepted allegedly orders of the KGB to assassinate the pope because of his support to the movement Solidarité in Poland. However, later, Ağca withdrew this version of the facts and gave other contradictory versions.

People whose Edward Hermann and Michael Parenti thinks that the history of Ağca is doubtful, more especially as this last did not make any allusion to the implication of the Bulgaria before being put in cell of insulation and visited by the Italian military intelligence service (SISMI), which would undoubtedly have blown the idea of the Bulgarian implication to him.

At the beginning August 1980, Ağca started to travel in the Mediterranean region, changing passports and identities, to undoubtedly scramble the tracks on its starting point with Sofia. During its voyage in Europe, Ağca had spent 50.000 dollars, but Ağca at that time did not have any work, which brought back to confirm the assumption of the assistance of the neofascist party MHP and/or the CIA. It is also thought that the Turkish businessman: Bekir Çelik near to the Turkish party of the Nationalistes (MHP) would have helped with the financing of the projects. Ağca acknowledged that Musa Celebi, which was the leader of MHP in Europe gave him the order to kill the Pape Jean-Paul II.

It arrived at Rome the May 10th 1981 by a train since Milan.

With Rome, he stated to have met three accomplices, a Turk and two Bulgarian, it is thought that the Turk was Musa Celebi. According to Ağca, the operation was directed by Zelio Vassilev the Military attach3e Bulgarian to Rome.

The plan was that Ağca and its reserve Oral Celik draw since the Place Saint-Pierre and then start a bomb to create panic and chaos, and to make it possible the group to flee towards the Bulgarian embassy. The May 13rd, they wrote postcards on the Saint-Pierre place while waiting for the Pape. When it passed, Ağca drew twice, but was quickly controlled by crowd. Celik panicked and thus did not start the bomb and did not shoot at the Pope, it disappears in crowd before being stopped afterwards little time.

Initially Ağca stated to belong to the Liberation popular front of Palestine but this organization contradicted any bond with him. A little after, Sergei Antonov, one of Bulgarian, was stopped on the basis testimony Ağca. After three years of lawsuit, he was declared not culprit for lack of evidence. The testimony of Ağca was often contradictory and sometimes even foolish since he declared being the incarnation of Jesus. The Bulgarian ones always claimed to be innocent and advanced that the history of Ağca was in fact a plot anticommunist set up by the gray Loups, the Italian secret services and the CIA (i.e Gladio). Edward Hermann, in his book on Bulgarian connection, affirmed that the CIA employed Michael Ledeen like defender of the thesis of the Bulgarian project. This thesis was installation by Ronald Reagan and the the United States to fight against Communism. The thesis of the implication of the network Stay-behind Gladio was also supported by the journalist Lucy Komisar

Ağca, condemned to the imprisonment with life in Italy for the attempted murder on Jean-Paul II, was grâcié, after 19 years spent behind the bars, by the Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, and was extradited towards the Turkey the June 14th 2000. As of its arrival in its native land, he was imprisoned in the power station of high security of Kartal-Maltepe (Istanbul), for the assassination in 1979 of the Turkish journalist Abdi İpekçi, for which he had been condemned to death in absentia in 1980, sorrow commuted to ten years of reclusion under the terms of a law of amnesty of 1991.

The June 26th 2000, the pope Jean-Paul II revealed the secret third of Fatima and explained why the attempted murder was the achievement of this third secrecy. Theorists of the conspiracy question the complete disclosure of the contents of the letter, because in general, it is believed that the predicted secrecy is the Apocalypse.

During its visit in Bulgaria in May 2002, the pope Jean-Paul II declared that he had never believed in the Bulgarian track.

Ağca declared: “For me, the Pape was the incarnation of capitalism as a whole”. In spite of a request for early release in November 2004, a Turkish court decided that it could not leave the prison until in 2010.

With at the beginning of February 2005, during the disease of the pope, Ağca sent his wishes to him and the End of the world announced to him. A little later, the pope published his book “Memory and identity: Conversations with the passage between two millenia”, which reports its vision of the attempted murder. The book is essentially a retranscription of the conversations which it had in Polish with his friend, the political philosopher Krzysztof Michalski and fire the reverend Jozef Tishner in 1993 with Castel Gandolfo close to Rome.

The January 9th 2006, a Turkish Tribunal decides to release it in the week and the January 12th, Mehmet Ali Ağca leaves Prison after nearly 25 last years behind the bars, including 19 in Italy. But its release is of short duration since it is cancelled the January 20th 2006 date on which it is again placed in detention. The Court of appeal having estimated that it was to continue to purge its ten years of prison sorrow to which it had been condemned for the murder of a Turkish journalist in 1979.

According to the report/ratio of a parliamentary board of inquiry Italy, published in March 2006, the the USSR would have financed the attack against the Pape Jean-Paul II in May 1981. These revelations, allotting the decision of the attack to the president of the USSR Léonid Brejnev and its organization with the Soviet military services, rest on the files of an ex-agent of the KGB passed in the West at the beginning of the Années 1990, Vassili Mitrokhine.

Interviews of 2005

The March 31st 2005, the death of the pope Jean-Paul II being imminent, Ağca granted an interview to the Italian newspaper Repubblica . . An English translation with accompanying notes can be also consulted. Ağca stated to work on a book concerning the attempted murder which should be published later in 2005. He also affirmed to have had accomplices with the the Vatican to help it. However, one week later, Turkish Weekly brought back the denial of Ağca.

When the pope died the April 2nd 2005, the brother of Ağca, Adnan declared, in an interview, that Mehmet Ali and all its family cried it and that the pope was their friend. The April 5th, CNN announced that Ağca wanted to assist with the funeral of the pope the April 8th. However, the Turkish authorities rejected this request.

Cultural references

The attempted murder of the pope is a major element of the book of Tom Clancy, Red Rabbit . Ağca is not expressly mentioned there but the book details the supposed implication of the KGB and the attempt itself.

See also the novel of Philippe Sollers, the Secrecy . See also documentary Yona Andronov, On the track of the wolves

References

Random links: