Ankara, Jan 18 (RIA Novosti) A Turkish assassin who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II in 1981 was released from jail Monday after almost 30 years in Italian and Turkish prisons.
According to his lawyers, Mehmet Ali Agca, 52, has said he will deliver a true account of his assassination attempt after he is released from prison.
“I will answer all of these questions (about the assassination attempt) in the next weeks,” Agca said in a letter released by his lawyers.
Just after the arrest over the attack on St Peter’s Square May 13, 1981, Agca claimed that he had acted alone.
The attack on the Pope has long been shrouded in mystery, although four years ago an Italian parliamentary commission accused former Soviet leaders and the Bulgarian secret service of being behind the assassination plot.
Agca once said Bulgarian agents acting on behalf of Moscow and the KGB were behind the attack, but later withdrew the accusation.
Agca, a former member of the Turkish ultranationalist Grey Wolves organisation, served 19 years in an Italian prison for the assassination attempt on the Pope.
Pope John Paul II met and forgave Agca in his cell in 1983 while the assassin was serving a 19-year sentence in an Italian high-security prison.
He was extradited to Turkey in 2000 and was sent back to jail there for the murder of a Turkish journalist in 1979.
Mehmet Ali Agca said that he wanted to visit Rome, meet with Pope Benedict XVI, and pray to the tomb of John Paul II. He also intends to get married.
Agca, who claimed to be a Messiah, announcing plans to write “the perfect Bible” and volunteering to kill Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, will be taken to medical experts to assess his fitness for military service.
In 2006 military medical experts ruled that he was not fit for the obligatory military service due to a “severe anti-social personality disorder”. However, authorities said that the medical report is not valid as it was never approved.
Agca’s lawyers said their client had received over 50 book and film offers from various publishers and producers, and could earn millions of dollars by selling his story.
