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@fasc1nate In 1981, Mehmet Ali Agca pulled a gun and shot Pope John Paul II during a procession in St. Peter's Square. Though critically wounded, the Pope survived four gunshot wounds to his abdomen. Following the shooting, Pope John Paul II asked people to "pray for my brother…whom I have sincerely forgiven". In 1983, Pope John Paul II and Agca met and spoke privately at the prison where Agca was being held. The Pope brought the photographer and the cameramen because he wanted the image in that cell to be shown around the world. In 2000, the Pope requested a...

The subject head of the document, carried under the words, “Special Importance,” read: “Regarding Senator Kennedy’s request to the General Secretary of the Communist Party Y. V. Andropov.” According to the memo, Senator Kennedy was “very troubled” by U.S.-Soviet relations, which Kennedy attributed not to the murderous tyrant running the USSR but to President Reagan. The problem was Reagan’s “belligerence,” said the memo, and made worse by Reagan’s stubbornness. “According to Kennedy,” reported Chebrikov, “the current threat is due to the President’s refusal to engage any modification to his politics.” That refusal, said the memo, was exacerbated by Reagan’s political...

Agca Says He Is Now A Catholic Published: April 30, 2009 In a letter written from a Turkish prison, Mehmet Ali Agca, author of the failed attempt against Pope John Paul II in 1981, claims to have renounced Islam and embraced the Catholic faith. Italian weekly Diva e people donna published the letter, French journal "I am looking for an Italian woman, who wants to correspond with me. Obviously (I hope) she is Catholic because from May 13 2007, I decided to renounce the Muslim faith and becoming a member of the Roman Catholic Church," Agca writes. "I have decided...

It happened this morning in Turkey: Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish man who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II in 1981, was released from a Turkish prison on Monday proclaiming that he was "the Christ eternal" after serving jail terms totaling 29 years. Under heavy guard and with his car flanked by a huge convoy of reporters and television crews, Mr. Agca, 52, was driven to a Turkish military hospital to be assessed for military service, which is compulsory in Turkey. Wearing a blue sweater, Mr. Agca looked tense in images taken by photographers through the darkened windows of...

The Turkish man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981 was released from prison today after more than 29 years behind bars Mehmet Ali Agca said in a statement issued by a lawyer that he was a messenger of God and that the world will end in this century. The 52-year-old waved to journalists as he left the prison in a convoy of several vehicles.

A Turkish assassin who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II in 1981 has said he will deliver a true account of his assassination attempt after he is released from jail, his lawyers said. Mehmet Ali Agca, 52, will be set free on January 18 after spending over 28 years in Italian and Turkish prisons. "I will answer to all of these questions [about the assassination attempt] in the next weeks," Agca said in a letter released by his lawyers earlier this week. He also said that he wanted to visit Rome, meet with Pope Benedict XVI, and pray to...

Man who shot Pope John Paul II to be released, wants to be baptised by Pope Benedict Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot Pope John Paul II four times in St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981, is eligible for release next month, January 2010. Agca was originally sentenced to life in prison for the shooting, but was pardoned in June 2000 by Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, with the Pope's blessings. Pope John Paul II had met with Agca in prison on Dec. 27, 1983 and forgave him. Agca spent 19 years and one month in the Italian prison. At...

ANKARA, Turkey - The Turkish gunman who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II is applying for Polish citizenship because he wants to live in the country of the late pontiff, whom he called his "spiritual brother." But the Polish Foreign Ministry said the chances of Mehmet Ali Agca getting citizenship are "minimal" since he hasn't provided any "good service" to John Paul's mostly Catholic homeland. Agca also wants to be transferred to a prison in Poland to serve the remainder of his sentence on a different conviction, lawyer Haci Ali Ozhan told The Associated Press. "He has chosen Poland...

EVER since Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish gunman, shot the late Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981 in St Peter’s Square in Rome, investigators have tried to solve one of the 20th century’s greatest mysteries: did Agca act alone or was he obeying communist orders? This week an Italian parliamentary commission will officially conclude that Agca was part of a huge conspiracy masterminded by the GRU, the Soviet military secret service, on the orders of the politburo and Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary of the Communist party. The findings are already being considered by a Rome prosecutor who may...

Soviet leadership ordered John Paul II hit: Italian commission MOSCOW : Leaders of the former Soviet Union ordered the assassination bid on Pope John Paul II in 1981, the head of an Italian parliamentary commission announced. But the post-Soviet intelligence service of President Vladimir Putin immediately dismissed the allegation as an absurdity. Italian Senator Paolo Guzzanti said the findings of the commission showed "beyond all reasonable doubt" that Moscow's military secret service, the GRU, was responsible for the shooting as the late pope greeted pilgrims in St Peter's Square. The assertion, for years a favourite of conspiracy theorists in Italy,...

It has been revealed that Turkey informed Italian officials about Mehmet Ali Agca's plan to assassinate Pope II Jean Paul one year before the incident.Turkish Interpol warned member countries by issuing a red bulletin after Agca escaped from prison in 1979 where he was sentenced to life for murdering Abdi Ipekci, editor of the moderate left-wing newspaper Milliyet; however, the countries did not pay much heed to "the red bulletin" at first. After Agca's assassination attempt, Interpol’s Secretariat General thanked the Turkish Security Directorate and held Turkey as an example for other countries.Retired Security Director Selahattin Gultepe who worked at...

ISTANBUL - The man who shot pope John Paul II in 1981, Mehmet Ali Agca, was remanded to Istanbul’s Kartal prison on Friday, after Turkey’s highest appeals court overturned the decision that released him from jail last week, media reported. Agca entered the prison on the Asian side of the city in a police car after questioning by police and undergoing a health check, CNN-Turk television said. He had been released from the prison on January 12 after nearly 25 years behind bars in Italy and Turkey. Turkish police had earlier picked up Agca in Kartal district, the city governor...

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Police took the man who shot Pope John Paul II back into custody Friday after an appeals court ordered him to return to prison to serve more time for killing a journalist and for other crimes in Turkey. Mehmet Ali Agca did not resist arrest after eight days of freedom, and he was taken to police headquarters in Istanbul, where TV cameras showed him handcuffed and yelling in English, Turkish and Italian. "I declare myself Messiah! I am not the son of God, I am Messiah!" shouted Agca, who has made similar outbursts in the past....

The Turkish gunman who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981 has been rearrested after a court ruled he should return to prison, eight days after being freed. Turkey's highest appeals court overturned the decision which allowed Mehmet Ali Agca to be released early. The ruling follows an appeal against his release by the Turkish government. Agca was jailed for bank robbery and murder committed before the attempt on the Pope's life, for which he served nearly 20 years in Italy. Agca, now 48, shot the Pope in St Peter's Square in 1981, but has never explained why. The pontiff...

The Turkish man who shot Pope John Paul II offered in 2000 to capture al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and planed to kill the late Syrian President Hafez Assad, a Turkish newspaper reported today, printing what it said were letters the gunman wrote. The Hurriyet newspaper printed handwritten letters purportedly penned by Mehmet Ali Agca. In one letter, dated September 1, 2000, and addressed to the head of the Turkish intelligence agency, Agca asked to be released from prison so he could travel to Afghanistan, infiltrate Bin Laden’s terror network and capture him “dead or alive”. “I would lovingly carry...

ANKARA, Turkey — The man convicted of trying to assassinate Pope John Paul II and released from prison this week failed to report to police Saturday, Turkish media reported Saturday, but his lawyer insisted he was "a free person" who did not have to check in. Mehmet Ali Agca has not been seen in public since his release Thursday, and failed to show up at a police station both Friday and Saturday despite a warning that a warrant could be issued for his arrest, Turkish television networks said. Agca was released from an Istanbul prison after serving some 25 years...

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, deputy speaker of the Russian State Duma and leader of the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party has suggested that the Soviet Union and its surrogate states would have been justified to kill Pope John Paul II who, he claims, was planted in the Vatican by the CIA to wrest Poland from its pro-Soviet rulers. In an interview with a Russian radio statio, on the day the Pope's would-be assassin, Ali Agca, was released from an Istanbul jail, Zhirinovsky was asked whether the KGB, had commissioned the attack. "There is no direct evidence necessarily of a Russian connection here, but...

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) - The Turkish gunman who shot Pope John Paul II might have been released from prison by mistake and may be returned to his cell to serve at least 11 more months for murdering a Turkish journalist, a newspaper said Friday, quoting the country's justice minister. Justice Minister Cemil Cicek ordered a review of Mehmet Ali Agca's complicated case hours after the gunman was released from prison on Thursday. Agca would remain free until an appeals court reviewed the case to see whether any errors were committed in freeing him. "According to preliminary information, I think the...

The release from prison of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who narrowly failed in his attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981, has understandably revived interest in one of the great unsolved whodunnits of the 20th century. At the time of the shooting, which took place as the Pope rode around the piazza in front of St Peter's Basilica in his Popemobile, it was initially thought that Agca had acted as a lone fanatic. He had, after all, previously written to the Pope informing him of his murderous intentions - hardly the modus operandi of the professional assassin....

THE Vatican said today it accepted the decision by a Turkish court to release Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who attempted to kill the late pope John Paul II in 1981. "With legal issues, the Holy See leaves it up to the courts with competence in these areas," Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said. He said the Vatican had only learned of the court's decision from press agencies and had not been given prior notice. Agca, 48, is expected to be released between Tuesday and Sunday, Turkish officials told the Anatolia news agency. He was a 23-year-old far-right militant on the...