Mehmet Ali Agca
Mehmet Ali Ağca, known as Ali Agca (Hekimhan, January 9, 1958), is a Turkish citizen who is known for the assassination attempt on the pope Saint John Paul II in Saint Peter's Square in the Vatican on May 13, 1981.
Biography
Ağca was born in the neighborhood of Hekimhan, in the province of Malatya, in Turkey. In his youth, he became a petty thief and a member of the street gangs in his hometown. After spending part of his childhood and youth in Malatya he came to Istanbul with his family. After finishing secondary education, he entered Istanbul University, specifically the Faculty of Economic Sciences. During his college years, he met with various ideological groups.
Later he became an arms trafficker between Turkey and Bulgaria, as they were NATO and Warsaw Pact countries (respectively) that shared a common border. Ağca went so far as to affirm that he received two months of training in weapons and terrorist tactics in Syria, as a member of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The training was paid for by the government of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, although this has never been proven.
Entry into the group of the Gray Wolves
After these alleged trainings in Syria[citation needed], Ağca joined the far-right paramilitary group Gray Wolves, who were at the time destabilizing Turkey and that led to a coup in 1980.
On February 1, 1979, under the orders of the Gray Wolves, Mehmet Ali Ağca assassinated Abdi İpekçi, editor of a leading left-leaning Turkish newspaper called Milliyet, in Istanbul. He was caught by an informant and was sentenced to life in prison. After serving 6 months in prison, he escaped with the help of Abdullah Çatlı, second in command of the Gray Wolves, and together they fled to Bulgaria, which was the base of operations for Turkish organized crime.
Assassination attempt on John Paul II
Ağca shot the pope on May 13, 1981, as he was driving through St. Peter's Square in an open vehicle. The pontiff was wounded in the hand, arm and abdomen. Two years later, in December 1983, the Pope visited him in the Rebibbia prison, spoke with him and pardoned him.
On June 13, 2000, Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi pardoned him in Italy, but he was extradited to Turkey, where he was to serve a sentence for crimes committed when he was a member of the Gray Wolves: the robbery of a taxi and the murder of the director of the aforementioned Turkish newspaper.
He was released on January 12, 2006, after 25 years in prison. At the end of that year, Ağca sent a handwritten message from an Ankara prison to Pope Benedict XVI in which he told her: "Don't come to Turkey. His life is in danger. They will kill you. As a man who knows these things, I tell him that his life is in danger, he should not come to Turkey », referring to the Pope's trip, scheduled for the end of November of that year. However, the pope made his official visit to this Eurasian country without any fuss.
Ağca should have remained in prison until at least January 18, 2014, but could continue until January 18, 2017 for crimes pending in his native Turkey.
However, on January 18, 2010, he was released, after years incarcerated in the high-security prison in the town of Sincan, on the outskirts of Ankara. After his release, Ağca was taken to a military hospital for checkups to see if he is fit to serve in the institution. One of his lawyers, Yilmaz Abosoğlu, told Reuters that Ağca was found mentally unstable and he would be acquitted. The press outnumbered the 25 or so Ağca supporters gathered outside the prison during his release. A band of pipes and drums played as Ağca left jail.
After leaving prison, in a letter released by his lawyer, Ağca proclaimed: «I am the eternal Messiah, I declare the divine message of God in the name of Allah, God is one, eternal and unique. God is whole. The Trinity does not exist. The Holy Spirit is nothing but an angel created by God. I declare that the end of the world is coming. The whole world will disappear at the end of this century. All human beings will die before the end of the century, the Bible is full of errors, I will write a perfect Bible."
Currently
After seeing his demands to reside in Vatican City and Portugal rejected, Ağca's lawyer filed the application for Polish citizenship on his behalf, stressing Agca's desire to live in Poland, even though the Polish government told him He claimed that he had very little chance of obtaining Polish citizenship. Mehmet Ali Ağca said that he wanted to visit the tomb of Pope John Paul II in Rome and meet his successors, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.
In 2009 several Spanish newspapers claimed that Mehmet Ali Ağca had reneged on Islam and had converted to Catholicism, since that was what the convicted Ağca stated in a letter written from the Turkish prison where he was serving his sentence at the time. There were those who, like his ex-lawyer, did not believe in this conversion. Many have doubted the seriousness of his conversations since he was declared unfit for military service, considered mentally unstable.
He once stated:
"I'll see you in three days. In the name of Almighty God, I proclaim the end of the world in this century. Everything will be destroyed, every human being will die. I am not God, I am not the Son of God. I am eternal Christ.”
In a statement published in August 2010 to the Italian daily Gente, Ağca said he would answer questions about the attack on John Paul II in the future, including whether the governments of the USSR and Bulgaria They were involved. However, on November 9, 2010, in an interview given to the Turkish public television TRT, Ağca accused the then Secretary of State of the Holy See, Agostino Casaroli, of planning to attack the pontiff.
On the occasion of the beatification of Pope John Paul II on May 1, 2011, Ağca assured the media again that he wanted to pray at the pontiff's tomb in Vatican City, and visit the city of Fatima in Portugal. For the time being, Italy and Portugal left the visa requests that Ali Ağca made at their respective embassies in Ankara unanswered. However, the Holy See indicated in a letter that such a visit was possible, but the Italian authorities remained silent in the face of Mehmet Ali Ağca's visa request, added his lawyer.
After several attempts, Ali Ağca managed to publish his memoirs in Italian in 2013, with the title Mi avevano promesso il paraiso. La mia vita e la verità sull'attentato al Papa ('I was promised paradise. My life and the truth about the attack on the Pope'). On this occasion, he accused Ayatollah Khomeini of ordering him to assassinate the Pope.
In November 2014, Ağca asked the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis during the latter's visit to Turkey from November 28 to 30 of that year, but the meeting was refused by the Vatican authorities. On that occasion, Ağca stated; «I asked the Vatican for a meeting with Pope Francis, but I still have not received any response. I already had a meeting with a pope, it is totally normal that I do so with him (Francis) as well." Later, on December 27 of that same year, Ali Ağca visited the tomb of John Paul II in the Basilica of Saint Peter in Vatican City and deposited a bouquet of white roses. "I came today because December 27 is the day of my meeting with the Pope," Ağca declared, alluding to the visit that John Paul II made to him in his cell in Italy 31 years ago, just two years after the attempt to murder.