Man who tried to kill John Paul II released

[faceless]

The man who tried to kill Pope John Paul II, Mehmet Ali Agca, gestures in a car as he is released from the prison in Ankara
Pope gunman Mehmet Ali Agca released from prison in Turkey
reuters

Mehmet Ali Agca, the gunman who tried to kill pope John Paul II in 1981, has been released from prison in Turkey after almost three decades behind bars. "The release procedure has been completed," his lawyer, Yilmaz Abosoglu said outside a high-security prison near Ankara. Agca, who spent more than 29 years in prison, was expected to be taken to a military facility and then to a hospital to renew a 2006 military hospital report which said he is not fit for obligatory military service because of “severe anti-social personality disorder”.

Agca was a 23-year-old militant of the notorious far-right Grey Wolves, on the run from Turkish justice facing murder charges, when he resurfaced in Saint Peter's Square in Rome on May 13, 1981 and opened fire on the Pope as he drove to an audience in an open vehicle. John Paul II was seriously wounded in the abdomen and Agca spent the next 19 years in Italian prisons.

He has claimed the attack was part of a divine plan and given often contradictory statements, frequently changing his story and forcing investigators to open dozens of inquiries. Charges that the Soviet Union and then-communist Bulgaria were behind the assassination attempt were never proved. In 2000, Italy pardoned Agca and extradited him to Turkey, where he was convicted for the murder of prominent journalist Abdi Ipekci, two armed robberies and escaping from prison, crimes all dating back to the 1970s.

There have been long-standing questions about Agca's mental health based on his frequent outbursts and claims that he was the Messiah. In a statement distributed earlier today by his lawyer outside the prison in Sincan on the outskirts of Ankara, the Turkish capital, he raved again: “I proclaim the end of the world. All the world will be destroyed in this century. Every human being will die in this century... I am the Christ eternal.”

Agca, 52, said last week that he would “answer all questions” about the murder attempt after his release. When he was arrested minutes after the attack on St Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981, he claimed that he had acted alone. In confused, often rambling testimony, he later indicated that Bulgarian agents acting on behalf of Moscow were behind the attack, but then withdrew this.

John Paul II met and forgave Agca in his cell in 1983 while the gunman was serving a 19-year sentence in an Italian high-security prison. Agca was pardoned in 2000 and returned to Turkey, where he was immediately re-arrested and given a ten-year prison sentence for murdering a Turkish newspaper editor in 1979.

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It will be interesting to hear his thoughts/rants...

[SpursFan1902]

Nice guy...

[pirtybirdy]

hmm....10 years for murdering a newspaper editor in 1979. Nice justice system.

[juamei]

The guy on the left looks like the hardest guy in the world. He has after all just been punched really hard in the face and he's not even blinking...