Attempted assassin warns Pope on Turkey visit

Istanbul, Sept 20: The man who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981 has warned the current Pope not to visit Turkey, saying his life would be in danger, his lawyer said today.

The comments came amid a furore in the Muslim world over Pope Benedict's comments on Islam and ahead of his scheduled visit to Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country, in November.

Pope Benedict is facing growing pressure to apologise unequivocally for remarks seen portraying Islam as a violent faith, which also triggered an angry response in Turkey.

''As someone who knows these matters well, I say your life is in danger. Don't come to Turkey,'' Mehmet Ali Agca said in comments released in a statement by his lawyer Mustafa Demirbag.

''Also, I won't be able to meet you as I am in prison,'' Agca said. Pope John Paul visited Agca in a Rome prison in 1983 and forgave him.

Agca is serving a sentence for the killing of a newspaper editor in the 1970s and also for robbery and is scheduled to be released from prison in January 2010.

In a separate rambling letter released by the lawyer, Agca said the Pope was a victim of bribery plot hatched by intelligence agencies and called on him to resign and return to Germany.

The former right-wing gangster served 19 years in an Italian prison for the assassination attempt before being pardoned at the Pope's behest in 2000 and extradited to Turkey.

He was briefly freed from jail in January but a high court overturned the decision to release him.

His motives for shooting Pope John Paul in Rome's St Peter's Square remain a mystery. Some believe he was a hitman for Soviet-era East European security services alarmed by the Polish-born pontiff's fierce opposition to communism.

REUTERS

Related Stories