The Turk who tried to kill pope John Paul II in 1981, Mehmet Ali Agca, was released from prison yesterday after almost three decades behind bars, but immediately faced authorities over his status as a draft dodger.
“The release procedure has been completed,” lawyer Yilmaz Abosoglu told an army of reporters outside the high-security prison near Ankara.
Wearing a blue sweater, the graying Agca, 52, raised his fist as he drove away in a car, escorted by several other vehicles. His car closely pursued by the media, Agca was immediately taken to a military hospital in Ankara.
His lawyers had said earlier that the military authorities still considered him a draft dodger and required him to undergo a check-up at a military hospital as soon as he was released.
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 the Vatican’s Saint Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981, and opened fire on the pope as he drove by in an open vehicle.
John Paul II was seriously wounded in the abdomen and Agca spent the next 19 years in Italian prisons.
The motive behind the attack remains a mystery. Agca has claimed the attack was part of a divine plan and has often given contradictory statements, frequently changing his story and forcing investigators to open dozens of inquiries.
Charges that the Soviet Union and 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.
The Turkish authorities had released Agca in January 2006 amid a legal mix-up, but re-arrested him after eight days when a court ruled that reductions to his jail term under amnesty laws and penal code amendments had been miscalculated.
On Sunday, his lawyer said Agca was still considered a draft dodger because an earlier medical report declaring him unfit had not been approved.
Agca was declared unfit for obligatory military service because of “advanced anti-social personality disorder” when he underwent a check-up at a military hospital during his short-lived release in 2006.
“Agca is in shock and insists he cannot hold a weapon because of his religious and philosophical convictions,” lawyer Haci Ali Ozhan said on Sunday, voicing concern over Agca’s safety if he was to be drafted.
In a series of rambling letters from prison, Agca has fed suggestions he is mentally disturbed, claiming to be the second Messiah, announcing plans to write “the perfect Bible” and volunteering to go to Afghanistan to kill al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Others, however, believe he is a sly operator playing the fool.
Agca has received more than 50 offers from foreign publishers and moviemakers, eager to buy his story in the hope that he may finally shed light on his attempt on the pope, lawyers said.
He has also said he wants to travel to the Vatican to see the tomb of John Paul II, who had visited him in prison in 1983.
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