Mehmet Ali Ağca
| Mehmet Ali Ağca | |
|---|---|
| Born |
January 9, 1958 Hekimhan |
| Nationality | Turkish |
| Criminal penalty | Life imprisonment in Italy (served 19 years); death penalty and various lengths of imprisonment in Turkey (served 10 years) |
| Criminal status | Paroled |
| Children | 2 |
| Conviction(s) |
Attempted murder (of Pope John Paul II) Murder (of Abdi İpekçi) Robbery, theft |
Mehmet Ali Ağca (Turkish pronunciation: [mehˈmet aˈli ˈaːdʒa]; born January 9, 1958) is a Turkishassassin and Grey Wolves member who murdered left-wing journalist Abdi İpekçi on February 1, 1979, and later shot and wounded Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981, after escaping from a Turkish prison. After serving 19 years of imprisonment in Italy where he was visited by the Pope, he was deported to Turkey, where he served a ten-year sentence. He was released on January 18, 2010. Ağca has described himself as a mercenary with no political orientation, although he is known to have been a member of the Turkish ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves organization and the state-sponsored Counter-Guerrilla.
On December 27, 2014, 33 years after his crime, Mehmet Ali Ağca publicly showed up at the Vatican to lay white roses on the recently canonized Saint John Paul II's tomb and said he wanted to meet Pope Francis, a request that was denied.
Ağca was born in the Hekimhan district, Malatya Province in Turkey. As a youth, he became a petty criminal and a member of numerous street gangs in his hometown. He became a smuggler between Turkey and Bulgaria. He claims to have received two months of training in weaponry and terrorist tactics in Syria as a member of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine paid for by the Communist Bulgarian government, although the PFLP has denied this.
After training he went to work for the far-right Turkish Grey Wolves.
On February 1, 1979, in Istanbul, under orders from the Grey Wolves, he murdered Abdi İpekçi, editor of the major Turkish newspaper Milliyet. After being denounced by an informant, he was caught and sentenced to life in prison. After serving six months, he escaped with the help of Abdullah Çatlı, second-in-command of the Grey Wolves, and fled to Bulgaria, which was a base of operation for the Turkish mafia. According to investigative journalist Lucy Komisar, Mehmet Ali Ağca had worked with Abdullah Çatlı in the 1979 assassination, who "then reportedly helped organize Ağca's escape from an Istanbul military prison, and some have suggested Çatlı was even involved in the Pope's assassination attempt". According to Reuters, Ağca had "escaped with suspected help from sympathizers in the security services". Lucy Komisar added that at the scene of the Mercedes-Benz crash where Çatlı died, he was found with a passport under the name of "Mehmet Özbay" — an alias also used by Mehmet Ali Ağca.
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