Agca Says He’s Able to Raise Dead to Life

ROME — Papal assailant Mehmet Ali Agca said today that he could raise people from the dead as he testified in the trial of five Turks and three Bulgarians accused of complicity in the attempted murder of Pope John Paul II in 1981.

“I will bring back to life a person who is scientifically dead, provided the Vatican acknowledges I am Jesus Christ,” Agca told the court in one of his outbursts.

Shown a photograph taken in St. Peter’s Square after he shot and wounded the pontiff, Agca said people who appeared to be running away were “criminals of the Bulgarian government and Kremlin.”

The prosecution alleges that Bulgarian agents employed Agca and Turkish associates to assassinate the Pope on May 13, 1981.

Agca said Turkish gunman Omer Ay, now imprisoned in Turkey, was present at the open-air general audience along with him and defendant Oral Celik, who is being tried in his absence.

Judge Severino Santiapichi asked Italian police to trace foreign guests of the Rome Hilton Hotel just before the shooting, following a suggestion by Agca that Omer Ay had stayed there using a false passport.