On 29 March 1986 Rome’s criminal court acquitted Sergei Antonov, blamed by Turkish terrorist Ali Ağca for the instigation and organization of the assault, attempted by him on 13 May 1981 against Pope John Paul II in the St. Peter’s Square, Rome. GiuseppeConsolo, the lawyer who defended Antonov back then visited Sofia on the occasion. He was welcomed with honors and was given an honorary degree by the Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski. The Sergei Antonov, the Rome Sufferer book was presented on the occasion of the anniversary. Atanas Kremenliev and Marin Petkov, intelligence officers from that period are its authors.

What happened on 13 May 1981? After wounding with a pistol the Pope, Ali Ağca was arrested and sentenced in a quick trial. He admitted his inner conviction and that he had acted on his own and was imprisoned for life. However, a year later the terrorist changed his testimony and started claiming that the Bulgarian secret services had prepared the assault and he had only taken the contract. Investigator Ilario Martela took over the case and after all he ordered the arrests of three Bulgarians – Sergei Antonov from the Balkan Airlines’ Rome offices, Todor Aivazov, a cashier at the Bulgarian embassy in Rome and Zhelyu Vasilev, a secretary to the military attaché.

Only Antonov was arrested in front of TV cameras on 25 November 1982, as the other two were in Bulgaria at that time. The news on the Bulgarian connection flashed around the globe.

US President Ronald Reagan had already declared the Crusade against the Empire of Evil – the USSR. American writer Claire Sterling had written her The Time of the Assassins book and the Polish Pope had already declared that he would stand up next to Lech Wałęsa on the barricades in the fight with communism in his motherland, if necessary.

Four years of pre-trial proceedings and a publicly acclaimed trial followed. However, on 29 March 1986 Judge Severino Santiapichi had no other choice, but to acquit Antonov due to the lack of enough evidence. Ali Ağca remained into prison for life. On 1 April 1986 Sergey Antonov returned to Sofia with the diagnosis brain atrophy, caused by the psychotropic agents, forcefully given to him in the Italian prisons, according to doctors. The man started living in solitude and on 1 August 2007 he was found dead in his apartment.

What happened to Ağca? Pope John Paul II forgave him in 2000 and that was a sign for the Italian President Carlo Ciampi to pardon the assassin, which did happen. On 13 June 2000, after the issuance of the pardon decree Ali Ağca was extradited to Turkey. Thus no one would have to investigate the case and the alleged Bulgarian connection anymore. The 2002 visit of the Pope to Bulgaria was the final chord of the saga. It was the first visit of a Pope in the 14-century-long history of this country which also broke a sensation. “I have never believed in the so-called Bulgarian connection, regarding the assassination attempt. I see it as big insinuation and injustice towards the Bulgarian people,” the Pope stated back then during his meeting with President Georgi Parvanov. At the same time the Italian magistrates had already carried out two more investigations for the Bulgarian connection, but those ended with no results. The questions still remain: who and why organized the assault? Who told Ağca to start talking on a Bulgarian connection?

The whole truth will remain a mystery for sure, as many interests interweaved amidst the existence of delicate balances between the secret services around the globe. Still, the Bulgarian connection had its role in the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the end of the 1980s, finalizing the last phase of WWII – the Cold War.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev