Mehmet Ali Ağca, the man who shot and injured Pope John Paul II and killed Turkish journalist Abdi İpekçi, was released from prison on Monday after more than 29 years behind bars. The gunman waved to journalists as he left the prison in a blue sedan surrounded by a convoy of vehicles.
He was taken to the Gülhane Military Academy of Medicine (GATA) to undergo a health assessment for compulsory military service.
After a medical exam lasting several hours, GATA found Ağca "unfit" for military service.
In 2006 GATA ruled that he was not fit for military service due to a “severe anti-social personality disorder,” but the report was found invalid by the Defense Ministry’s health department.
A Turkish law allows individuals who have spent many years in prison to declare themselves ineligible for military service.
There have been long-standing questions about the 52-year-old Ağca’s mental health based on his frequent outbursts and claims that he was the Messiah.
In a statement on Monday, released by his lawyer outside the prison in Ankara’s Sincan district, Ağca said: “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.”
Hacı Ali Özhan, who was Ağca’s lawyer, announced on Sunday that his client was disappointed that he could be conscripted into military service. He said it was against Ağca’s religious and philosophical beliefs to bear arms. “There will also be difficulties in protecting Mehmet Ali Ağca’s life where thousands of people carry weapons,” the lawyer told reporters.
Adnan Ağca, the gunman’s brother, however, said on Monday that he had discharged the lawyer as he put his brother’s life in danger with his statements.
“I hereby announce that I have discharged Özhan from serving as Mehmet Ali Ağca’s lawyer because he made public statements without informing me. I extend my thanks to him for his services to my brother up until now. I declare that Yılmaz Aboşoğlu and Gökay Çağaralp Gültekin will serve as the lawyers for my brother, for whom I am a guardian,” Adnan Ağca remarked.
Murder of İpekçi, pope assassination attempt
Ağca shot Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981, as the pontiff rode in an open vehicle in St. Peter’s Square. The pope was hit in the abdomen, left hand and right arm, but the bullets missed his vital organs.
Pope John Paul II met with Ağca in Italy’s Rebibbia prison in 1983 and forgave him for the shooting. The motive for the attack remains unclear but has not been linked to Islamic issues.
When Ağca was arrested minutes after the attack, he declared he had acted alone. Later, he claimed Bulgaria and the Soviet Union’s KGB were behind the attack, but then retracted these claims. His contradictory statements have frustrated prosecutors over the decades.
Ağca has said he will answer questions about the attack in the days ahead.
Ağca was released after completing his sentence for killing journalist Abdi İpekçi in 1979 and other crimes. He had received a life sentence, which amounts to 36 years under Turkish law, for murdering İpekçi, but escaped from a Turkish prison less than six months into the sentence and went on to shoot the pope in Rome two years later.
After his extradition on June 14, 2000, Ağca was separately sentenced to seven years and four months imprisonment for two robberies committed in Turkey in 1979 but authorities deducted time served during his prison sentence in Italy.
Several amnesties and an amendment of the penal code reduced his term further. The complex situation complicated the calculation of his remaining term and even led to his wrongful release from prison in 2006. He was re-imprisoned eight days later.
Ağca has said he is currently considering book, film and television documentary offers for his story.
The man who tried to kill Pope John Paul II
Mehmet Ali Ağca, the man who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981, was released from prison in the Turkish capital of Ankara on Monday.
Here are some facts about Ağca and the path that took him from life as a small-time gangster in Turkey to a would-be assassin in St. Peter’s Square.
Mehmet Ali Ağca was born on Jan. 9, 1958, to a poor Turkish family. As a boy, he was involved in petty crime and smuggling between Turkey and Bulgaria. He became a member of the militant far-right Grey Wolves group as a teenager. In 1979, he murdered Abdi İpekçi, a left-wing journalist. He was sentenced to life in prison but escaped with the help of right-wing comrades after six months in prison and fled to Bulgaria.
On May 13, 1981, Ağca shot Pope John Paul II several times while the pope rode in an open vehicle at the start of his weekly audience in St Peter’s Square. Ağca was immediately apprehended and arrested. The pope narrowly survived and spent weeks in the hospital. Three days after the shooting, he forgave Ağca during a live radio broadcast from his hospital bed.
At the time of the shooting, events in the pope’s Polish homeland were starting a domino effect that was to lead to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989. The pope was a strong supporter of the dissident Solidarity trade union in Poland, and many people suspected that the shooting was part of a larger conspiracy to silence the pope. At the time, John Paul II was threatening the stability of the Soviet bloc and had reportedly told the late Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev that if Moscow invaded Poland, he would throw his weight behind the resistance movement.
In July 1981, an Italian court found Ağca guilty of trying to assassinate the pope and sentenced him to life in prison. In December 1983, the pope visited him in his Rome jail cell, and they chatted privately. The content of that conversation has never been disclosed.
At a second trial in 1986, Italian prosecutors failed to prove charges that the Bulgarian secret service hired Ağca on behalf of the Soviet Union to counter the pope’s support for Solidarity. The trial was a spectacle, with Ağca changing his version of events several times. During the trial, he spoke mysteriously about wanting to know the Third Secret of Fatima, the last of three messages that the Virgin Mary was said to have given to three shepherd children during a vision in 1917 in Portugal.
In May 2000, the Vatican revealed the Fatima secret, saying it predicted the assassination attempt on the pope and communist persecution. The investigation of the assassination attempt formally ended in 1997, leaving many unanswered questions.
In June 2000, Italy pardoned Ağca for the pope’s shooting and extradited him to his native Turkey to serve the remainder of a term for the İpekçi murder.
Pope John Paul died on April 2, 2005.
In 2006, an Italian parliamentary investigative commission said in a report that leaders of the former Soviet Union were behind the assassination attempt against the pope.
“This commission believes, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the leadership of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate Pope John Paul II,” the report said.
On Jan. 12, 2006 Ağca was briefly released from prison in Turkey, but a court ordered him to be jailed again.
On Jan. 13, 2010, Ağca said in comments that he wanted to meet Pope Benedict and visit the tomb of Pope John Paul II.
He said after his release he would answer questions about the attack on the pope, including whether the Kremlin used the Bulgarian government to participate in the assassination attempt.
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