• Grey Wolves tried to assassinate JP II, claims new book
  • 21.04.2011
The extreme-right wing Turkish group, the Grey Wolves masterminded the John Paul II assassination attempt in 1981, claim authors of a new book, Kill the Pope: Truth about the Assassination Attempt on John Paul II, which has been released into bookshops in Italy.

Penned by La Repubblica journalist, Marco Ansaldo and Turkish correspondent Yasemin Taskin, the book is based on new documents which they claim discount other theories surrounding the assassination attempt, including the belief that Bulgarian communists were involved.

The book’s release comes just days before the late JP II’s  beatification ceremony in the Vatican on 1 May, a major step towards the Polish Pope’s sainthood.

According to the book, the Grey Wolves, of which would-be assassin Mehmet Ali Agca was a member, single-handedly sought to carry out the killing out of hatred for the West and as a challenge to the Turkish military.

The authors claim that the CIA orchestrated the theory that the communist Bulgarian government was behind the shooting, a theory still popular today.

The two authors even name the people they claim were directly responsible for the fabrication of the so-called Bulgarian link - namely Michael Ledeen along with a group established at Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

The Bulgarian link was by by the US in order to discredit the Soviet Union, say the authors.

Journalist Marco Ansaldo claims that in a recent interview with would-be-assassin Mehmed Ali Agca, he clearly implied that the Grey Wolves were behind the shooting.

Mehmed Ali Agca shot John Paul II at St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican City on 13 May, 1981. He served 19 years in an Italian prison for the crime, followed by a 10-year sentence in Turkey for an earlier murder of an editor of an Turkish daily.

He was released from jail in January 2010.

The release of the book comes after a recent statement made by former communist leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski who said he thought “radical Islamists were responsible for the assassination attempt three decades ago. (ab/pg)