The World - News from Oct. 3, 1985

Bulgarian defendant Sergei Antonov insisted that he had nothing to do with the 1981 attempt to kill Pope John Paul II and told a Rome court he had not known the Pope’s convicted assailant, Mehmet Ali Agca. The arrest of Antonov in Rome in 1982 provided the first link in the alleged “Bulgarian connection” to the plot to kill the pontiff. Agca, now the state’s star witness, has claimed that Antonov and two Bulgarian diplomats helped him and other Turks plan the attack in St. Peter’s Square. Bulgaria has refused to return the two diplomats for trial.