AN UNSETTLING QUESTION AT ROME TRIAL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505100004-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: March 1, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505100004-8
NEW YORK TIMES
~~"'~~'`~ ` Q 1 March 1986
ON PAGE .-.r..
An Unsettling Question at Rome Trial
By JOHN TAGLIABUE
Special to The New York Times
ROME, Feb. 28 - A prosecutor's re-
quest for acquittal in the trial over the
shooting of the Pope has raised the un-
comfortable question of how Italy
could hold a Bulgarian defendant for
more than three years when the state's
own prosecutor now ad-
mits there was insufficient
evidence for conviction.
Analysis The proposal by the
prosecutor, Antonio
Marini - that the Bulgar-
ian, Sergei I. Antonov, and two other
Bulgarian defendants, who are being
tried in absentia, be "absolved for tack
of proof" - would not amount to full
absolution. Their defense attorneys
have protested the proposal, demand-
ing a full declaration of innocence.
But the recommendation, made to
the jury of two judges and six lay jurors
who will get the case after nearly nine
months of intense debate, constituted
an admission that the evidence against
the Bulgarians was ambiguous at best.
To be sure, the jury could theoreti-
cally ignore the prosecutor's proposal
and seek conviction - though it is
thought very unlikely to do so.
In the defense camp, no one was rais-
ing accusatory fingers against Mr.
Marini or Judge Ilario Martella, the in-
vestigating magistrate whose 23-month
inquiry led to the trial
Investigators `Did Their Job'
"They did their job," said Giuseppe
Consolo, the chief defense counsel for
the Bulgarians. "They acted in hon-
esty,.
Still, questions arose.
"They might have detained him for
two weeks, maybe more, but not for
more than three years," Mr. Consolo
said of Mr. Antonov.
Partly, the focus of the questioning is
likely to be on the investigation by
Judge Martella, who gained a reputa-
tion for independence and doggedness.
Mr. Consolo said Judge Martella had
worked "honestly and carefully." And
Mr. Marini, who had to bear the Mar-
tella banner into court, found words of
praise in recent days for his laborious
effort.
But it was Mr. Martella who elevated
Mehmet All Agca, the Turk who was
,convicted of shooting Pope John Paul
II in 1981, to the role of star witness. He
sustained Mr. ?Agca's charges of Bul-
garian involvement in the plot, despite
repeated contradictions, backtracking
and reversals in. the Turk's account.
Nevertheless, Mr. Marini, in his
summation, was generous in spreading.
the blame elsewhere. He laid it heavily
on the court and its presiding judge,
Severino Santlapichi, who he said had
worked admirably until about Septem-
ber and then sought little else but a
rapid .conclusion to the trial, evidently
convinced that further searching for
conclusive evidence was futile.
He also denounced the Bulgarian
Government. Unlike Turkey, which left
the four Turkish defendants to the
workings of Italian justice, Bulgaria
mounted a defense effort that
prompted the prosecutor to accuse it of
spreading a state-inspired smoke-
screen around its citizens.
To be sure, more was at stake for the
Bulgarians than for Turkey. For if Mr.
Agca emerged as a paid mercenary,
the imputed motive for the killing im-
pugned only the Soviet Union and its
East bloc allies. Born in the depths of
the Soviet-American chill of 1981, the
case quickly became a symbol reflect-
ing the extent to which the Russians
and their allies would go to annihilate
resistance to Communism in Poland,
which critics of Moscow saw as the
most plausible motive for the at-
tempted assassination of the Polish-
born Pope.
But despite all these wide re-
proaches, Mr. Marini seemed aware
throughout that the weakest link in his
case remained Mr. Agca. As much as
the prosecution sought to project its
circumstantial evidence as so many
struts to the Turk's basic assertions of
Bulgarian complicity, it soon became
evident that without his cooperation the
case was destined to collapse.
Bulgaria Wants to Try Agea
For the Bulgarians and their defend-
t
ers l was clear that a was the cuIpri
the e slanderer and fascist pa as,
sassin, as be came to be called in the
proan broadsides. w ho had been
coac Western intelligence to
smear Bulgaria and
rest of
e
So et bloc. Bulgarian justice officials
are even reviewing the possibilty of a
trial of the Turkish gunman on charges
of slandering the Bulgarian nation.
For the prosecution, on the other
hand, it was a pure case of desertion.
Mr. Agca, for whatever motive, had
joined the team in 1982, when he began
cooperating with justice officials in
sketching the Bulgarian connection,
after deserting his original contention
that he had acted alone.
But then, at the start of the trial, he
inexplicably bolted. "He just switched
teams," an official close to the prose-
cutor said.
The question that is likely to continue
to be asked is: Just whose team was he
on in the first place?
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505100004-8