The stabbing of Mgr. Luigi Padovese, the Pope’s
apostolic vicar of Anatolia (Turkey) by his driver, Murat Altun, was not
premeditated or ordered by any political or religious group, an
İskenderun court ruled on Monday. The driver was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the apostolic vicars’ murder.
The maximum penalty for murder in Turkey is life imprisonment. But judges reduced Altun’s prison sentence to 15 years due to “unjust provocation”, according to Turkish newspaper Hurriyet.
The 30-page long sentence states that the murderer was apparently pressured into converting to Christianity.
Altun had given several conflicting accounts of what happened, including that Padovese had molested him and that he had prayed to Allah and wanted to "kill the demon".
“I received an order, a holy message and so I did it,” Padovese’s murderer said in a statement.