c. 2006 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Mehmet Ali Agca, the gunman who shot John Paul II in St. Peter’s square, could be released from a Turkish prison as early as this week, capping decades of jail time that resulted from the 1981 assassination attempt and a previous murder conviction.

According to the state-affiliated news agency Anatolia, Agca could be released Thursday (Jan. 12) as a result of a court ruling that drastically reduced his initial sentence for the 1979 murder of Abdi Ipekci, a newspaper editor.

Agca, a Turk, was extradited to Turkey in 2000 to serve a 10-year sentence for the slaying of Ipekci after spending 19 years in Italian custody for shooting the former pope.

Agca fired at John Paul on May 13, 1981, striking the pontiff in the chest as he rode through St. Peter’s Square in an open air “popemobile.”

Two years later, John Paul visited Acga in his jail cell, a historic gesture that set the stage for Italian authorities to officially pardon the gunman in 2000.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the Vatican had not received word from Turkish authorities of Agca’s pending release as of Sunday evening.

“The Holy See has learned only from news agencies of the news of the possible freedom of Ali Agca,” he said in a brief statement late Sunday (Jan. 8).

“Before a problem of a judicial nature, the Holy See submits to the decisions of the tribunals involved in this matter,” he said.

Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul’s personal secretary, was quoted in Corriere della Sera of Milan, Monday (Jan. 9), as saying that the late pope “prayed for (Agca) from heaven, as do I.”

Agca was arrested for the murder of Ipekci in 1979, but escaped from Turkish custody after serving six months in prison. Although he was tried in absentia and sentenced to death, that sentence was subsequently commuted.

In November 2004, a Turkish court re-sentenced Agca for the slaying to life in prison, a 36-year term. But the ruling also applied changes in Turkey’s penal code, which qualified Agca to reduce his sentence by 19 years for the time he served in Italian custody. An additional 10 years were cut from his sentence as part of a national amnesty passed in 2000.

Anatolia indicated that Agca could face mandatory military service, which he never served, following his release.

For decades, the motives behind Agca’s assassination attempt have remained unclear, giving rise to numerous conspiracy theories.

Agca told Rome daily La Repubblica in March 2005 that “nobody in the world” knew of the assassination attempt while also claiming that the attack was part of a Vatican conspiracy.

Media speculation has focused on Agca’s alleged ties to the Bulgarian secret service and the Soviet KGB, which supposedly aimed to eliminate John Paul for supporting Poland’s anti-communist movement.

“Once free, Ali Agca’s life is in grave danger because he is the recipient of many truths regarding the plot against the pope,” Ferdinando Imposimato, a former Rome magistrate, was quoted as saying by Italian media.

Although John Paul dismissed some of the speculation, the pontiff described Agca as a professional assassin in his book “Memory and Identity,” released shortly before his death.

“Ali Agca, as everyone says, is a professional assassin. The shooting was not his initiative, someone else planned it, someone else commissioned him,” the pope wrote.

John Paul said the assassination attempt was ultimately foiled by divine intervention.

“(Agca) knew how to shoot, and he certainly shot to kill. Yet it was as if someone was guiding and deflecting the bullet,” he said.

Agca has been linked to the Gray Wolves, a ultra-nationalist group that clashed with leftist groups during the 1970s violence that roiled Turkey. He allegedly killed Ipekci for writing editorials that criticized rightist groups.

MO/JL END RNS