Secret Film

New details of the papal plot

Revelations continue to emerge about the thesis that the 1981 shooting of Pope John Paul II was the result of a conspiracy. The most spectacular assertion in a secret, 1,243-page report submitted to Italian authorities last week by Judge Ilario Martella was that a second would-be assassin, besides Turkish Terrorist Mehmet Ali Agca, fired at the Pontiff in St. Peter's Square. According to Martella, the second gunman was Oral Celik, 25, a Turk described as Agca's closest friend, who has not been seen since the day of the shooting. Agca told Martella that Celik was with him in the square that day, but his testimony is considered inconclusive.

Now Martella is said to have a heretofore secret film that--along with medical reports, ballistic evidence and eyewitness accounts--lends further credence to the two-gunman theory.

According to Agca's testimony, he fired "two or three shots in rapid succession" as John Paul came into pistol range in the square. Martella argues that Agca fired only twice, and that it was Celik who got off the third shot heard by witnesses and recorded on the film. Nonetheless, only one pistol, one bullet and one spent cartridge were ever recovered.

The film in Martella's possession was shot by a Vatican camera crew and for unknown reasons was not shown at Agca's July 1981 trial. According to Martel la's report, the footage clearly shows the explosion of two shots coming from Agca's gun, and the film's sound track contains two reports from his 9-mm Browning automatic pistol. Martella says that as many as 20 witnesses reported they heard three shots. In addition, he cites a previously undisclosed portion of Agca's confession in which he recalls that "if I found myself unable to fire off at least five pistol shots, Celik also should have fired."

The Martella document adds another layer of complexity to the Bulgarian connection. In the report's summary, the judge ordered three Bulgarians and five Turks to be tried for the conspiracy.

Among them is Zhelio Vassilev, a former official of the Bulgarian embassy in Rome, who is currently in Sofia and thus beyond the reach of Italian law. Martella relates that according to Agca, Vassilev urged at a May 10, 1981, meeting of the conspirators that the shooting be carried out as soon as possible. According to Agca, Vassilev emphasized urgency be cause "French and Rumanian secret services . . . had come to know about the possibility of [the assassination], and that the news had probably been given to them by some Bulgarian who played a double-cross." Martella reports that "many confirmations" for such intriguing possibilities were found during the investigation.

Martella's case for a conspiracy trial, which is expected to begin some time next year, repeatedly suggests that prosecutors follow up on his findings. Only a fraction of the evidence gathered by Martella during nearly three years of investigation has been made public so far.