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Guman: Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot Pop John Paul II, waits for his assesment at a military hospital in Ankara today
The Turkish man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981 was released from prison today after more than 28 years behind bars.
Mehmet Ali Agca punched the air as he left the prison on the outskirts of Ankara, Turkey, in a white sedan car in a convoy of several vehicles. He was taken to a military hospital to be assessed for compulsory military service.
A 2006 military hospital report said he is not fit for service because of a ‘severe anti-social personality disorder.’
There have been long-standing questions about the 52-year-old Agca’s mental health based on his frequent outbursts and claims that he was the Messiah.
In a statement on Monday issued by his lawyers, 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 shot Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981, as he rode in an open car in St. Peter’s Square.
The pontiff was hit in the abdomen, left hand and right arm, but the bullets missed vital organs. He later met with Agca in Italy’s Rebibbia prison in 1983 and forgave him for the shooting.
The motive for the attack remains unclear and when Agca was arrested minutes after the attack, he declared he had acted alone.
Later, he suggested Bulgaria and the Soviet Union’s KGB were behind the attack, but later withdrew this. His contradictory statements have frustrated prosecutors over the decades.
But Italian magistrates who investigated the attack on the Pope remain convinced that there was a Soviet plot, arising from Moscow’s fears that an anti-communist revolt in his native Poland would bring down the entire Soviet system.
Victory punch: Mehmet Ali Agca (C) puts his fist in the air as he is released from the prison in Ankara, Turkey today
Agca has said that he will answer questions about the attack after he is released from prison and has asked for millions of pounds in return for his story.
He is even considering book, film and documentary offers, according to his lawyers.
‘We are not running away from the media, he may speak in a few days,’ his lawyer Gokay Gultekin said today.
Agca was released after completing his sentence for killing a left-wing journalist, Abdi Ipekci, in 1979.
He had received a life sentence but escaped from a Turkish prison less than six months later and went on to shoot the pope in Rome two years later.
After his extradition in 2000, Agca was separately sentenced to seven years and four months for two robberies in Turkey in 1979.
After a miscalucation in his jail sentence, he was wrongfully released from prison in 2006 and declared unfit for military service. He was re-imprisoned eight days later.
Source -
dailymail.co.uk