ITALY: Ali Agca, the man who tried to kill pope John Paul, is due for release, but the motive for the shooting is still a mystery, writes Paddy Agnew
The Vatican has issued a cautious, non-committal response to the news that Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II in St Peter's Square on May 13th, 1981, is due to be released from a Turkish prison on Thursday.
In a brief statement, senior Vatican spokesman Dr Joaquin Navarro-Valls commented: "The Holy See has learned, only via news agencies, that Ali Agca may shortly be released. The Holy See, when faced with a problem of a judicial kind, accepts the decisions of the courts involved in the matter."
Agca (48) became the central figure in one of the great mysteries of post-war Italian life when he attempted to kill John Paul II as the Pope was being driven around St Peter's Square in the popemobile at the end of a weekly public audience. Using a Browning pistol, Agca fired two shots from close range into the Pope's abdomen.
Although John Paul II almost died from the wounds, doctors at Rome's Gemelli hospital were able to save his life because the bullets had missed vital organs.
For the rest of his life, the late Pope, who died in April last year, was convinced that he had been saved thanks to the intervention and protection of Mary, Mother of God.
May 13th is the date of the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, marking the first of three apparitions by the Virgin Mary to three peasant children at Fatima, Portugal in 1917.
One year after the assassination attempt, Pope John Paul II went to Fatima to pray and give thanks to Mary for saving his life.
From his sickbed, just four days after the shooting, the Pope had pardoned Ali Agca's violent gesture, whilst two years later in December 1983 he made a much publicised visit to Agca in Rome's Rebbibia jail. During a 20-minute long chat with Agca, the late Pope once more pardoned the Turkish gunman.
Agca was given a life sentence for the assassination attempt in a brief trial in Rome which concluded on July 22nd, 1981. After serving 19 years of his sentence, he was given a state pardon in 2000 by Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who had acted at the behest of the Pope himself who was keen to mark jubilee year with an important act of clemency.
Extradited to Turkey, Agca was then imprisoned to serve out a previously imposed 10 year sentence for the murder of Turkish journalist Abdi Ipekci, editor of liberal paper Milliyet, shot down in 1979.
Thanks to modifications to the Turkish penal code, introduced last year and intended to bring the Turkish penal system into line with European Union norms, Agca will now be given an early release, partly because of his good behaviour in prison.
A member of the militant right-wing group, the Grey Wolves, Agca remained an enigmatic, mysterious figure throughout his 19 years in Italian prisons. Nearly 25 years after the shooting, it is still unclear precisely who or what was behind the assassination attempt.
At different moments, Agca alleged he had been commissioned by the secret services of Bulgaria and the former Soviet Union. At other times, he claimed to have acted on his own initiative whilst he further muddied the waters by suggesting that both the CIA and senior figures in the Vatican itself had commissioned the shooting.
Throughout the early part of his incarceration, Agca also undermined his own statements by regularly claiming that he was "the new Messiah". Later he claimed to have found God, whilst later again he expressed fears for his own safety.
Throughout all of this bewildering behaviour, it was difficult to establish whether Agca's contradictory statements were the expression of genuine mental instability or merely a cunning plan intended to hide the truth behind the shooting.
Despite his bizarre behaviour, many observers still believe that Agca was indeed an agent for East-Bloc secret services. In the early 1980s, Pope John Paul II's staunch support of the Solidarity trade union in his native Poland struck one of the first blows in the gradual downfall of East-Bloc communism.
Pope John Paul himself paid little attention either to the speculation or the many different judicial investigations prompted by the shooting.
Asked once by his old friend, Polish Cardinal Andrzej Deskur, about his apparent lack of interest in conspiracy theories, John Paul replied: "They don't interest me because it was the Devil who did this, and the Devil can conspire against us in a thousand different ways."