Suspect convicted murderer

Press, 15 May 1981, Page 1

Suspect convicted murderer

NZPA-Reuter Rome Italian magistrates spent the night interrogating the prime suspect, holding: him under heavy guard at Rome’s police headquarters. ? The police said the man gave , his name as Mehmet Ali Agca, aged 22. He was captured seconds after the shots were fired,. and,' according to the Italian news agency, Ansa,. declared at first “I am a Palestinian comrade?’

The police withheld details of the investigation but said they were trying ,to determine whether the suspect • was an escaped Turkish terrorist named Mehmet Ali Agca, who had been • convicted of murdering a noted Turkish newspaper editor, Abdi Ipekci. ■i Turkey has said’that the ” suspect appeared, to, be a well-known ; Turkish fugitive under, a. sentence of death <•' ■ At a news conference at ‘ the Turkish Embassy in Washington, the Ambassador. Mr S'ukru Elekdag, said that Agca? had been.sought by Turkish’" authori- "■ ties and Jnterpol. ■

"The Turkish . police have been under instruction to . shoot him on sight," Mr Elekdag said. When the Turkish police learned that Agca was in Rome, after a stay in West Germany, they warned Italian authorities about 15 days ago. ’ He was convicted and sentenced to death, embassy officials said, for murder in 1979. But in November, 1979, soon before Pope John Paul arrived in Turkey on a visit, Agca escaped. He sent a letter to a Turkish newspaper warning that he would shoot the Pope if the visit was not cancelled. He said in the letter that the Pope' was somehow: involved, in the attack that: had taken place that month on a mosque in Mecca, the Islamic; holy city in Saudi Arabia.. .- A” ’

According to Italian police sources, the suspect first flew into Italy on April 5 to Rome’s- Leonardo Da Vinci Airport, using a false passport made out to Ozgun Faruk, allegedly born in Neusehir, Turkey, in 1953, The pass-

port was issued on August 11, 1980, and was valid for two years. •

On the evening of April 8, the suspect checked in at the Hotel Posta in Perugia, the medieval city in central Italy, and requested a single room with a’ bath, registering under Faruk’s name, the police said. The next morning, according to the hotel owner, he went to the famed University for Foreigners outside the city’s ancient Etruscan .Gate and, claiming to have a Turkish scholarship, registered for a threemonth course in Italian. He paid the tuition fees of 150,000 lire (about SNZ 166) and joined the course, which was already under way, the next day. However, according to police sources, he paid his hotel bill, took back his passport, and left. :

The police were investigating whether four other Turks who were at the hotel during the same time had any connection with him. • J"rl L. 1 f ■

The next sign of the suspect came on May 9, when he flew from Majorca, the Spanish Balearic Island, to

Milan’s Malpensa Airport aboard a charter flight. A day later he was in Rome, registering at a dingy pension (boarding house) near Piazza Cavour, less than a kilometre from Vatican City. The police later found a loaded clip for the large and powerful Browning 9mm semi-automatic pistol,- in his room. ■

The police also found the false passport in the name of Ozgun Faruk. Before the attempted assination, the swarthy, closecropped suspect, dressed in a white shift and sports jacket, mingled with the excited crowd to await the Pope’s appearance <at St Peter’s Square. As the Pope drove across the Piazza, standing in an open white jeep, two or three shots rang out and witnesses reported seeing small puffs of smoke. As the suspect ran in the direction of Bernini’s elegant seventeeth century colonnade which encircles the Square, people in the crowd grappled with him and helped two plainclothes policemen to arrest him.

He threw the gun away, but a member of the Italian Paramilitary Carabinieri Corps quickly recovered it. Four Italian magistrates, including the leading judge at present investigating the terrorist Red Brigades, interrogated the suspect with the help of translators. According to Ansa, the initial attempts of the police to check the suspect’s movements in Italy had apparently failed because of his use of the false passport.

However, a photo-jour-nalist from' Perugia, who saw his picture on television, reportedly took a photograph of the image, and then compared that with photographs of students registered at the University of Perugia. He found his photographs under the name of Ozgun Faruk and reported it to the police. Agca is said to have been living in West Germany and married to a German woman. The Turkish authorities have sought his ■_ capture and extradition, but it is said the West Germans have hesitated because of his status in Germany.