Agca Disrupts Trial on Plot to Murder Pope

With a cry of “I am Jesus Christ,” the gunman who wounded Pope John Paul II created a courtroom uproar on the first day of the “Bulgarian connection” trial here Monday.

Mehmet Ali Agca, the 27-year-old Turkish terrorist upon whose reliability as a witness virtually the entire prosecution case rests, twice interrupted opening proceedings and had to be escorted from his courtroom cage after shouting in Italian:

“I am Jesus Christ. I am omnipotent. I announce the end of the world. The world will be destroyed.”

Worst Possible Beginning

It appeared to be the worst possible beginning for the prosecution, which plans to use Agca as its star witness against three alleged Bulgarian secret agents and four other Turks on trial for masterminding and aiding in Agca’s near-fatal assault on the Pope in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981.

One of the accused Bulgarians, Sergei Ivanov Antonov, 37, the former Rome station manager for Balkan Air, sat impassively in his steel-barred defendant’s cage, adjacent to Agca’s, during the proceedings. His mother, Ivanka, sister, Tania, and pigtailed 14-year-old daughter, Ani, were seated at a table a few feet away, listening to the otherwise routine legal byplay in the fortress-like courtroom over earphones that gave a simultaneous translation in Bulgarian.

The other two Bulgarians charged with planning and assisting Agca’s attack on the Pope--former Rome embassy officers Todor Stoyanov Aivazov, 41, and Zhelio Kolev Vasilev, 42--left Italy in 1982 and refused to appear for the trial.

Their defense lawyer, Manfredo Rossi, argued Monday that both are protected by diplomatic immunity and should be dropped from the case, but the court ruled against the plea after prosecutor Antonio Marini complained that “an attempt on the life of the supreme pontiff is not part of the functions of a diplomat.”

Presiding Judge Severino Santiapichi, who also presided over Agca’s 1981 trial in the papal attack and sentenced the gunman to life, said he will continue trying Aivazov and Vasilev in absentia and rule on the question of their diplomatic status when the trial ends.

Two of the four Turks charged along with Agca--an underworld boss named Bekir Celenk, 50, now under loose surveillance in Bulgaria, and a fellow terrorist, Oral Celik, 26, whose whereabouts are unknown--also are being tried in absentia.

‘Gray Wolves’

The other alleged Turkish accomplices, Musa Cerdar Celebi, 33, a reputed leader of Turkey’s right-wing “Gray Wolves” terrorists, and Omar Bagci, 39, a laborer charged with delivering Agca’s gun in Italy, were extradited from West Germany and Switzerland.

As the trial opened, they occupied adjoining defendant’s cages in the former Olympic gymnasium that was first converted to courtroom use for the trial of Red Brigades terrorists who murdered former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro.

Agca’s surprising outburst followed an earlier attempt to interrupt the trial by calling out “Your Honor!” to Santiapichi, who rebuked him with the reply, “I’ll get to you later.”

The second interruption, in which Agca claimed to be Jesus Christ, prompted Santiapichi to order him removed by three armed guards. Agca was permitted to return five minutes later and remained silent until late in the daylong court session, when he was called in front of the two-judge, six-juror court to testify.

“We are here to ascertain the truth of the facts in the attempt on the life of the Pope,” he said in Italian, which he has perfected during his four years in prison. “A very grave crime, undoubtedly, but also the greatest tragedy in the history of mankind. No one has the faculty of knowing, only the Vatican . . .” whereupon Santiapichi stopped him with the observation, “I am running this trial.”

When called upon to speak again, Agca proclaimed that he was not “unbelievable or crazy.”

“I am a man completely sane of mind,” he said. “I am a rational man, rather intelligent.”

‘Agca Is a Liar’

After the day’s court session, Antonov’s Italian defense attorney, Giuseppe Consolo, told reporters that “the court very soon will appreciate Agca for what he is--a liar, (with) psychological problems.”

Agca’s testimony ended when the court’s sound system broke down, and the court recessed because he could not be heard.

The star witness’s bizarre behavior was only one element of the circus-like atmosphere that pervaded the opening of the trial.

Hours before the trial began, a large tourist bus arrived in the parking lot where about 150 journalists were beginning to queue for courtroom seats. The bus held a group of about 60 mustachioed Turkish workers from West Germany who said they had come to demonstrate their support for Celebi, who heads that country’s federation of Turkish migrants.

In the courtroom, American, Bulgarian, Italian and other European television cameras panned the scene as almost 100 still photographers and journalists shoved lawyers and court officials aside to crowd in front of the prisoners’ cages when the handcuffed defendants were led in.

Agca, freshly shaved and looking almost dapper in pale blue sport shirt and jacket, his crew-cut hair noticeably grayer than when Pope John Paul II called on him in prison last year, mugged for the cameras.

The other defendants remained sober-faced. At least two of them, the Turks, appeared unmoved by the Italian-language proceedings, which they did not understand.

Antonov speaks Italian, but late in the day when Agca began to testify, he asked for a word-by-word Bulgarian translation. Agca ignored his court-provided Turkish interpreter and spoke only in Italian.

During the procedural phase of the trial opening, the lawyer for Ann Odre, of Buffalo, N.Y., a tourist who was wounded by the gunfire that felled the Pope, asked for civil damages for his client to be decided along with the guilt or innocence of the defendants. Although such a parallel damage claim is permitted under Italian law, Santiapichi rejected the motion.