Word: antonov
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Antonov An-26 troop transport had just lumbered down the runway and taken off from Khost, near the Pakistan border, when it was blasted from the sky by mujahedin rebels. The incident, in which 37 Afghan soldiers and six crew members were killed, marked a coming of age of sorts for the mujahedin. Military analysts say the plane was the biggest prize yet claimed by the rebels' new arsenal of U.S.-made Stinger missiles...
Half of the defendants were absent throughout the trial. The sole Bulgarian in court was Sergei Antonov, 37, the bespectacled deputy chief of Rome's Balkan Air office, who has been in Italian custody since 1982 and allegedly helped plan the plot. His presumed accomplices, Todor Aivazov, 43, and Zhelyo Vassilev, 44, Bulgarian embassy officials in Rome at the time of the shooting, were safely home in Sofia. Both left Italy shortly before Antonov's arrest as part of what Bulgarian officials called a normal embassy rotation. Two of the four Turkish defendants were also missing. Oral Celik...
...Everyone who knows me knows that I do not speak English," insisted Sergei Antonov, in his native Bulgarian. That disclaimer by the trembling, white- faced defendant came in response to pointed questioning by Judge Severino Santiapichi last week at the four-month-old trial in Rome of Antonov and six other defendants; they are accused of conspiring with Turkish Gunman Mehmet Ali Agca to assassinate Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square four years ago. The question of Antonov's linguistic skills is considered vital to the , prosecution's case because Agca has said that he communicated with...
...questioning, the judge was skeptical that Antonov could have functioned effectively in his job as deputy chief of Bulgaria's Balkan Airlines' Rome office without a working knowledge of English. In fact, one important prosecution witness, former Balkan Airlines Hostess Magdalena Traynova, who now lives in Chicago, said that she once worked with Antonov and was certain that he spoke the language. Said Traynova: "I couldn't myself have gotten my job without English...
...Tehran in 1980. More baffling still, in January 1984 Agca said he had invented both Malenkov and the Soviet official. Last week Agca described the bombing of the radio stations as having taken place in late 1980; the stations were actually attacked in February 1981. The dramatic identification of Antonov lost much of its effect when Agca admitted 20 minutes later, "It is possible I am mistaken." He also seemed to mock his own charges against the Masonic lodge when he insisted that the organization "knew with certainty that I am Jesus Christ." Judge Santiapichi interrupted, "Let us leave aside...