The Turkish man who attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981 has been released from prison in Turkey.
It is reported that Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot and wounded Pope John Paul in St Peter's Square, is being taken to a military recruitment centre for medical checks prior to doing compulsory military service.
Agca served 19 years in an Italian prison for the assassination attempt before being pardoned at the Pope's behest in 2000.
He was then extradited to Turkey to serve a separate 25-year sentence in an Istanbul jail for robbery and the 1979 murder of Turkish newspaper editor Abdi Ipekci.
However, a change in Turkish law meant that Agca's time in prison in Italy was cut from his sentence leading to today's release.
The release has been criticised by the newspaper Mr Ipekci worked for, Milliyet, which said the Turkish Justice Minister should have intervened to keep Agca in prison.
Agca has given conflicting reasons for the assassination attempt.
At a 1986 trial, prosecutors failed to prove charges that Bulgarian secret services had hired him to kill the Pope on behalf of the Soviet Union.
The so-called ‘Bulgarian Connection’ trial ended with an acquittal for lack of sufficient evidence of three Turks and three Bulgarians charged with conspiring along with Agca.
Pope John Paul II, who is credited by historians with helping the collapse of communism in eastern Europe in 1989, said on a trip to Bulgaria in 2002 that he had never believed the country was linked to the assassination bid.
He died last year aged 84.
Agca, who said he converted to Christianity after the Pope visited him in prison in 1983, now claims that he is a man of peace specially chosen by God.
