Terrorism on the Trail of an Elusive Turk

By Jamie Murphy

He is one of the most wanted terrorists in the world. Italian authorities say he was an accomplice of Mehmet Ali Agca on that fateful day in May 1981 when Agca tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II. He may in fact have fired at least one pistol shot at the Pontiff before fleeing from St. Peter's Square. But for the past four years, the shadowy Oral Celik, 25, has remained on the loose, his whereabouts a mystery. Says one Italian official involved in the investigation of the papal shooting: "We know nothing."

Now Swiss authorities claim to have found the trail of the elusive Turk while pursuing a routine heroin investigation. In a secret international arrest warrant issued through Interpol, the international police organization, Swiss magistrates have charged Celik with running a small-time heroin ring between Istanbul and the Swiss city of Basel.

The Swiss have proceeded independently of the Italian investigation of the papal shooting, which, beginning in May, will bring Agca and seven accused coconspirators to trial in Rome. Agca, who has already been convicted of his part in the shooting, will be retried in light of new evidence of a conspiracy. Italian prosecutors plan to try Celik in absentia.

Ironically, the Swiss findings appear to cast some doubt on the Italian case. According to Agca, Celik should have had access to 3 million deutsche marks (then worth about $1.3 million) allegedly paid to the conspirators on behalf of the government of Bulgaria a week in advance of the abortive assassination attempt. Says Giuseppe Consolo, an attorney for Bulgarian Sergei Antonov, one of the accused conspirators: "It seems very strange that Oral Celik is engaged in small-scale smuggling in Switzerland when he is supposed to have been hired by the Bulgarians to kill the Pope and has 3 million deutsche marks in his pocket." Some involved with the case believe that the Swiss disclosure of Celik's drug dealings contradicts the theory that Celik is living in a comfortable, secure hideout. Consolo says he intends to make an issue of this point in the trial.

Agca has testified that he and Celik began as terrorists by undertaking a variety of political crimes for pay. Though their primary ties were to the Gray Wolves, a right-wing Turkish terrorist organization, they apparently had no particular ideological motive. Agca claims that Celik was in Sofia, Bulgaria, when the plot to kill the Pope was hatched during July and August of 1980. Italian court documents allege that Celik "actively cooperated in the crucial stages of the planning, final agreement and execution of the attempt on the Pontiff." It was Celik, according to Agca, who purchased four Browning 9-mm automatic pistols in Vienna, including the one Agca was to use to shoot the Pope. Since the attempt on Pope John Paul's life, Celik has been variously reported to be dead, secluded in Bulgaria or prospering in Latin America with a face altered by plastic surgery.

According to Jorg Schild, chief of narcotics prosecutions in Basel, however, these theories are wrong. Schild has revealed that Seref Benli, a Turkish guest worker, was arrested last June near Basel while attempting to sell 250 grams of heroin to a police informer. Two days later, Swiss police arrested Messat Bilicen, also an immigrant Turk and Benli's alleged accomplice, on similar charges. According to Schild, Bilicen confessed that he had been acting as a courier for a drug-trafficking network headed by Celik.

^ Schild claims that Celik organized at least two shipments of heroin that found their way from Istanbul to Basel via Greece, Yugoslavia and Italy. Curiously, Celik's network skirted Bulgaria, which often serves as a drop-off point for heroin leaving Turkey. Also, Celik has apparently been dealing in relatively small quantities, one-tenth the size of shipments regularly handled by major traffickers. The Swiss suspect that Celik, under the protection of the Gray Wolves, has been running the drug ring for at least two or three years. Proceeds from Celik's heroin sales, according to Schild, have gone to buy guns for the Turkish terrorist group.

With reporting by Roberto Suro/Rome