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The subject head of the document, carried under the words, “Special Importance,” read: “Regarding Senator Kennedy’s request to the General Secretary of the Communist Party Y. V. Andropov.” According to the memo, Senator Kennedy was “very troubled” by U.S.-Soviet relations, which Kennedy attributed not to the murderous tyrant running the USSR but to President Reagan. The problem was Reagan’s “belligerence,” said the memo, and made worse by Reagan’s stubbornness. “According to Kennedy,” reported Chebrikov, “the current threat is due to the President’s refusal to engage any modification to his politics.” That refusal, said the memo, was exacerbated by Reagan’s political...

January 18, 2010 Gunman Mehmet Ali Agca may reveal KGB plot to kill Pope John Paul II Richard Owen The Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II nearly 30 years ago is to be released from prison today Monday and has raised hopes that he will finally shed light on whether the assassination attempt was a KGB plot. Mehmet Ali Agca, 52, said last week that he would “answer all questions” about the murder attempt after his release. When he was arrested minutes after the attack on St Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981, he claimed that...

EVER since Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish gunman, shot the late Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981 in St Peter’s Square in Rome, investigators have tried to solve one of the 20th century’s greatest mysteries: did Agca act alone or was he obeying communist orders? This week an Italian parliamentary commission will officially conclude that Agca was part of a huge conspiracy masterminded by the GRU, the Soviet military secret service, on the orders of the politburo and Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary of the Communist party. The findings are already being considered by a Rome prosecutor who may...

MEHMET Ali Agca, the Turk who attempted to kill pope John Paul II in 1981, was freed yesterday after almost 25 years behind bars, but may soon return to jail amid legal confusion over his early release. Less than six hours after Agca walked out of the high-security Kartal prison on Istanbul's Asian shore, Justice Minister Cemil Cicek said he would order a review of the case as a debate raged among jurists over whether his release was legally sound. Mr Cicek hinted that the 48-year-old Agca, who served 19 years in Italy for shooting and seriously wounding the pope...

Pope 'praying from heaven' 09/01/2006 18:41 - (SA) Warsaw - Former pope John Paul II is "praying from heaven" for Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who attempted to kill the pontiff in 1981 and who is expected to be released from jail this week, said the pope's former private secretary on Monday. Spokesperson Robert Necek said Stanslaw Dziwisz, who held the wounded pope in his arms after he had been shot, said he accepted the Turkish court's decision to release Agca. Necek said Dziwisz, who was now the archbishop of Krakow in southern Poland, "is praying for Ali Agca and...

THE Vatican said today it accepted the decision by a Turkish court to release Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who attempted to kill the late pope John Paul II in 1981. "With legal issues, the Holy See leaves it up to the courts with competence in these areas," Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said. He said the Vatican had only learned of the court's decision from press agencies and had not been given prior notice. Agca, 48, is expected to be released between Tuesday and Sunday, Turkish officials told the Anatolia news agency. He was a 23-year-old far-right militant on the...

MAN WHO SHOT POPE TO BE FREED

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca, who gravely wounded Pope John Paul in a failed assassination attempt in 1981, was grief-stricken over the Pontiff's death, Agca's brother said Sunday. Agca, now in an Istanbul prison, was mourning the loss of "a great friend," the gunman's brother Adnan Agca told Reuters. "He is extremely saddened, he is in grief. He loved the Pope," said Adnan Agca. "They developed a personal friendship while Mehmet Ali was (imprisoned) in Italy, and they had announced their brotherhood. "The Pope showed my brother and the rest of our family closeness. He was a...

THE man who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981 has sent a message from his Turkish jail wishing the ailing pontiff a speedy recovery, and also calling on him to acknowledge that the world would soon be coming to an end. Mehmet Ali Agca, 46, was extradited to Turkey in June 2000 after serving 19 years in Italy for shooting and seriously wounding the Pope, who has forgiven him for the attack. "Dear Pope John Paul II, I and you suffer for the fulfilment of a divine universal plan ... I thank you for having revealed...

ISTANBUL, TURKEY - The Turkish man who shot Pope John Paul II wished the hospitalized pontiff a speedy recovery Thursday, but also urged him to tell the world that its end is near — the latest cryptic message from the mysterious man behind the 1981 attack. Mehmet Ali Agca was extradited to Turkey in 2000 after serving almost 20 years in Italy for the 1981 shooting of the pope. Agca, who is serving a prison sentence in Turkey in a murder and two robberies committed in 1979, has given conflicting reasons for the attack on the pope, and his motives...