Clemency granted to Turkish gunman who attempted to assassinate pope

Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot Pope John Paul in 1981, has been flown to Turkey after Italy granted him a pardon from a life sentence. Mehmet Ali Agca was jailed 19 years ago for the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul, whom he shot at point blank range in St Peter's Square in 1981. The presidential palace said today the Justice Minister had signed an extradition decree which will send Agca, now aged 43, back to Turkey. Agca has still to serve part of a sentence in Turkey for killing a journalist in 1978. The Vatican said this evening it was satisfied with President Ciampi's decision to pardon Ali Agca, who has been already forgiven by the Pope.

The man who President Carlo Ciampi pardoned has a murky history: in February 1979, more than two years before he tried to kill the pope, he assassinated Abdi Ipekci, the editor of a respected Turkish daily newspaper. He confessed to the murder, then retracted, and then escaped from a maximum security jail dressed as a soldier and wrote to his victim's former paper threatening to kill the Pope if he came to Turkey. While he was on the run, a Turkish court sentenced him to death.

Although from a modest background he succeeded in visiting Iran, Bulgaria, Switzerland and Austria, before turning up in St Peter's Square in May 1981 brandishing a gun. He missed Pope John Paul's abdominal artery by a fraction of an inch. The Pope spent five months recuperating and prayed for his attacker in prison. There was much speculation that the attack was part of a Soviet-inspired plot to eliminate the Pope who eventually helped to undermine communism in Eastern Europe.

Today's pardon follows the Pope's decision in Portugal last month to reveal the third secret of Fatima: which foretold in 1917 what was interpreted as an assassination attempt on Pope John Paul sixty four years later. Immediately, Agca claimed from his Roman prison that he had been the unwitting instrument in a divine plan. He said he felt relieved of the weight of responsibility for the shooting by the revelation of the secret.

It is not clear yet when Agca will be extradited to Turkey. A spokesperson for the Italian Justice Ministry said the crimes for which which he found guilty were not punishable by the death sentence. The question now is whether Agca will throw light on the suggestions that he was not acting alone but for Soviet-inspired intelligence when he shot the Pope nineteen years ago.