Istanbul
Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, could be released from prison next year, an Istanbul court said this week. Agca escaped from a Turkish prison in 1979, leaving behind a letter saying he was off to kill the pope. Two years later, he pushed through a crowd of some 20,000 in St. Peter’s Square, at the Vatican, and fired on the Popemobile, hitting the pope four times, twice in the stomach. The pope eventually recovered, and Agca spent nearly 20 years in an Italian jail for the crime. He was transferred to a Turkish prison in 2000 to finish the sentence for his earlier crime, the murder of a Turkish journalist. That offense originally carried a 10-year sentence, but changes to Turkish law reduced the penalty to six years, and Agca, now 46, will be eligible for release in December 2005. The Popemobile now has bulletproof windows.
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