Pope John Paul II's would-be assassin freed from Turkish prison

Published: 2006-01-12

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Turkish terrorist who shot and seriously wounded Pope John Paul II in a failed 1981 assassination attempt was freed on parole from a Turkish prison Jan. 12. Mehmet Ali Agca was immediately handcuffed and taken to a military recruitment center to register for military service, obligatory for all Turkish men. He also underwent a medical exam to see if he was fit for service. Agca fled the military draft in the 1970s. Since his extradition from Italy to Turkey in 2000, Agca served five years of a 10-year sentence for the 1979 murder of a Turkish journalist and two robberies the same year. But a Turkish court said Agca had completed his prison term and could be released, according to reports by the country's semiofficial Anatolia news agency. Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, commenting on "the news of the possible freedom of Ali Agca" in a Jan. 8 press release, said the decision to release Agca should be up to the Turkish courts.

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