Agca Says He Waited Year for Rescue Before Talking

Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish terrorist who shot Pope John Paul II, today testified that he waited a year before cooperating with authorities because his alleged accomplices had promised to arrange “my escape from prison.”

Agca, 27, speaking in Italian, took the stand for a sixth day in the trial of four Turks and three Bulgarians charged with complicity in the May 13, 1981, assassination attempt against the pontiff at St. Peter’s Square, which seriously wounded John Paul.

Agca also said a Vatican employee’s teen-age daughter, whose disappearance in 1983 was linked to demands for his release, is still alive.

Judge Severino Santiapichi asked Agca why he initially insisted that he acted alone and waited a year before cooperating with police.

“They should have arranged my escape from prison in some way or kidnaped someone to exchange,” Agca replied.

The judge asked Agca if the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, daughter of a Vatican messenger, had anything to do with plans to arrange Agca’s escape.

Orlandi, then 15, disappeared in June, 1983, and self-proclaimed kidnapers demanded Agca’s release for her freedom. They never offered proof that they were holding her or that she was alive.

“Emanuela Orlandi is alive with certainty. She was kidnaped by a powerful Masonic organization, the P-2 of Licio Gelli, because that organization knew with certainty that I am Jesus Christ,” Agca said. “They wanted to use me as a tool.”

The P-2 Masonic Lodge has been linked to right-wing terrorism in Italy and crimes including conspiracy to overturn Italy’s constitutional order. It is now outlawed, and Gelli is a fugitive.