Sergei Antonov, the Bulgarian who was wrongly accused of involvement in the 1981 assassination attempt on the late Pope John Paul II, has been found dead in his flat in Sofia.

Initial reports say Antonov died a few days ago and was found only after a neighbour, who got suspicious for not having seen him a few days, called an ambulance.

On 13 May 1981 Pope John Paul II was shot and seriously wounded by Turkish gunman Ali Agca in St Peter's Square. The would-be killer never gave a motive, and mystery has continued to surround the assassination attempt. An alleged link between Agca and Bulgarian agents, and through them to the Soviet Union's KGB, fed speculations over the so-called Bulgarian connection for years on end.

Bulgarian Sergei Antonov, who was arrested after the shooting and held for more than three years in Italy, was acquitted over lack of evidence. At the time of the arrest Antonov was 32 and worked as a former manager in the Rome office of Balkan Air. Shattered and physically damaged, he returned to Bulgaria unable to carry on a conversation or concentrate on complex tasks, symptoms his friends say came from the use of psychotropic drugs in his interrogation.

During his historic visit to Bulgaria in May 2002 the pope said he never believed in the so-called Bulgarian connection.

"I never believed in the so-called Bulgarian connection because of my great esteem and respect for the Bulgarian people," the Pope said in Sofia.

The Bulgarian connection was first resurrected in 2005 by the Italian media, who claimed that Bulgarian classified documents contain evidence that the attack was planned by the Soviet KGB with participation of the secret service of the former East Germany - the Stasi - and its Bulgarian counterpart.

Bulgaria's special services blamed the so-called Bulgarian connection in the assassination attempt on Western services, CIA in particular, and the Italian services which visited Turkish gunman Ali Agca in prison shortly after the shooting.

An Italian parliamentary commission concluded in March 2006 that the former Soviet Union was behind the assassination attempt on the late Pope John Paul II.

A Turkish court released the would-be killer Mehmet Ali Agca on January 12, 2006 after years of incarceration, claiming that he had served his sentence.

Ali Agca was extradited to Turkey in 2000 after serving almost 20 years in Italy for shooting and wounding the pope in St. Peter's Square in Rome.

Years after the attempt on the Pope's life, Ali Agca was visited by John Paul II in his prison cell and pardoned.

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