Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in St Peter's Square in May 1981, has been released from prison in the Turkish capital Ankara.
Agca served 19 years in an Italian prison for the attack, before being pardoned on the Pope's initiative in 2000.
He was extradited to serve a sentence in Turkey for other crimes, including the 1979 murder of a newspaper editor.
Agca, 52, left the prison compound in a four-car convoy, obscured behind tinted glass windows, although he was seen waving as he got into one of the vehicles inside the compound.
Agca's motives for shooting and wounding the Pope at the Vatican in 1981 remain a mystery.
Some believe he was working for Soviet-era East European security services alarmed by the Polish-born pontiff's fierce opposition to communism.
Pope John Paul II died in 2005.
In a statement issued last week, Agca said he would answer questions on the attack in the coming weeks, including whether the Soviet and Bulgarian governments were involved.
