Ankara, Turkey
Turkey’s Supreme Court has sent the man who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981 back to prison. Mehmet Ali Agca served 19 years in an Italian prison for that crime and was then extradited to Turkey to do time for the 1979 murder of a prominent Turkish journalist. Two weeks ago, a Turkish court freed him, saying that his jail time in Rome counted toward the Turkish crime. But after a huge public outcry, the Supreme Court overturned the ruling and said Agca must stay in prison another four years. The police who rearrested Agca said his eight days on the outside couldn’t have been very pleasant. “Agca gives the impression of being a miserable, helpless man,” police said. “He is not in a rational state of mind.”
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