Bulgarian accused in plot to kill pope dies

Bulgarian accused in plot to kill pope dies

The story of one of the most notorious plots said to have taken place during the cold war was first reported by Claire Sterling in Reader's Digest in 1982.

The article suggested that the Soviet Union, threatened by a Polish pope at a time when the anti-Communist Solidarity movement was growing in Poland, had enlisted the Bulgarian secret services and Turkish militants to assassinate John Paul II.

Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot the pope, was a member of the Grey Wolves, an extremist nationalist group in Turkey.

He said after his arrest that Antonov, a representative in Rome of Balkan Airlines, then Bulgaria's state-owned airline, had been an accomplice on behalf of the Bulgarian intelligence services.

Agca also named as co-conspirators two other Bulgarians in the Bulgarian Embassy in Rome: Zhelyo Vasilev, the secretary of the military attaché, and Todor Aivazov, an accountant at the embassy.

Both returned to Bulgaria before arrests were made in the case.