Pope's failed assassin released

A Turkish national who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981 has been released from prison after almost three decades behind bars.

"The release procedure has been completed," Mehmet Ali Agca's lawyer Yilmaz Abosoglu said outside a high-security prison near Ankara on Monday.

Abosoglu said that the 52-year-old Agca would be immediately taken to an army recruitment office to sort out procedures concerning his status as a draft dodger.

He was a member of the notorious Grey Wolves ultranationalist group. He was on the run from Turkish justice and facing murder charges, when he opened fire on the pope in Rome on May 13, 1981.

The pope received serious injuries in the abdomen and Agca spent the next 19 years in Italian prisons.

Italy pardoned Agca in 2000 and extradited him to Turkey, where he was convicted of the death of prominent journalist Abdi Ipekci, two armed robberies and escaping from prison, crimes all dating back to the 1970s.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=116436§ionid=3510212.