‘I Am Christ,’ Agca Says Again, Jeopardizing Prosecution’s Case

The Turk who shot Pope John Paul II refused to answer questions about the attack in court Tuesday, again proclaiming “I am Christ” and jeopardizing the state’s case against him and seven co-defendants in the 1981 assassination plot.

Mehmet Ali Agca, 27, enunciated his words slowly in Italian as he sat before the microphone on the witness stand and made hand gestures in an apparent imitation of the pontiff.

“I am Jesus Christ reincarnated. In this generation, the world will be destroyed. The years of human civilization are numbered,” Agca said, repeating the declaration that rocked the court during Monday’s opening session.

Agca went further in Tuesday’s outburst. He demanded that the Vatican respond to his comments before he testifies as the prosecution’s star witness, and he linked the papal attack to the Miracle of Fatima, a series of visions three shepherd children said they experienced in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917.

Bunker Courtroom

On trial in the super-security bunker courtroom at the Italian Olympic sports complex are Agca, four other Turks and three Bulgarians--all accused of plotting the attempt on the Pope’s life.

Agca shot John Paul in the hand and abdomen on May 13, 1981, in St. Peter’s Square. Two American tourists were also wounded in the attack, for which Agca is already serving a life term.

“I have communicated a message from eternal God,” Agca told the court. “Today I will expect a reply from the Vatican. If the Holy See remains silent, I will continue to collaborate with the court. If it denies what I have said, I can no longer speak.”

Asked for comment on Agca’s new outburst, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro Valls told reporters, “There is no comment.”

Faced with Agca’s refusal to answer questions, Judge Severino Santiapichi dismissed him from the stand and called a second Turkish defendant, Omar Bagci, 38, accused of smuggling into Italy the Browning pistol Agca used to shoot the Pope.

Met in Switzerland

Bagci told the court he first met Agca in the Swiss city of Olten in January, 1981. He said he was introduced by his friend, Eyup Erdem, who Italian investigators believe was a leader of Turkey’s right-wing Gray Wolves terrorist group, to which Agca also belonged.

Bagci denied belonging to the Gray Wolves and denied claims that a Turkish “People’s Hearth” association for which he worked as secretary in Switzerland was a front for the Wolves.

The prosecution had hoped Agca would be their main witness in a bid to prove there was an international plot to kill the Pope. But defense lawyers jubilantly predicted Agca’s behavior could cause the trial to collapse.

“I am not at all astonished by Agca’s behavior, because it is still the same person who for three years has made fun of Italian justice,” Giuseppe Consolo, a lawyer defending Sergei Ivanov Antonov, the only Bulgarian defendant present at the trial.

Linked to Secret

Agca said the papal attack was “linked with the third secret of the Madonna of Fatima.”

In the visions of the three shepherd children, the Virgin Mary was said to have made three prophecies, the third one a secret.

The late Pope John XXIII opened the envelope containing the secret prediction in 1960 but the Vatican has never revealed it. It is reputed to warn of the destruction of humanity in the second half of this century.

The first prophecy concerned a vision of hell. The second dealt with the conversion of the people of Russia through devotion to Mary.