Man who tried to kill the pope free after years in jail

Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish man who attempted to kill pope John Paul II in 1981, was on Monday freed from prison after almost three decades behind bars, but the motive for his attack remains shrouded in mystery.

The greying 52-year-old raised his fist as he drove away in a car from a high-security prison near Ankara, AFP correspondents said.

Closely pursued by a swarm of reporters, Agca -- a draft dodger -- was immediately taken to a military hospital for a psychiatric check-up, which declared him unfit for army service, his lawyer Yilmaz Abosoglu told AFP.

The procedure was required under Turkish law which obliges all men over 18 to do military service.

Agca then went to a five-star hotel in central Ankara.

Dressed in a dark blue suit and wearing a tie, his arrival sparked a media stampede, and struggling with cameramen his lawyers led him into a lift.

Agca was a 23-year-old militant of the notorious far-right Grey Wolves, on the run from Turkish justice facing murder charges, when he resurfaced in Saint Peter's Square on May 13, 1981, and fired on the pope driving by in an open vehicle. Profile of a would-be pope killer

John Paul II was seriously wounded in the abdomen and Agca spent the next 19 years in Italian prisons.

The motive behind the attack remains a mystery.

True to style, Agca -- who claims to be a second messiah and is widely believed to be mentally unstable -- released through his lawyers a statement to "proclaim" the Apocalypse. Related article: Freed attacker says 'end of world is nigh'

"All the world will be destroyed in this century. Every human being will die in this century," he wrote.

"The Gospel is full of mistakes. I will write the perfect Gospel," he added, signing the paper as "The Christ eternal, Mehmet Ali Agca".

A memorable picture of the gunman shaking hands with John Paul II was attached to the statement.

The late Polish pontiff had visited Agca in his Italian jail in 1983 and forgave him for the assassination attempt.

In his book "Memory and Identity" John Paul II said he was convinced that the plot was planned and commissioned and that Agca was a mere puppet.

Agca has claimed the attack was part of a divine plan, frequently changing his story and forcing investigators to open dozens of inquiries.

Charges that the Soviet Union and then-communist Bulgaria were behind the assassination attempt were never proved.

In 2006, Agca was already declared unfit for military service due to "advanced anti-social personality disorder" when he underwent a check-up during a short-lived release.

But his lawyers said he was asked to undergo another examination because the initial report had not been approved by the military authorities.

Agca was released in January 2006, but re-arrested after eight days when a court ruled that reductions to his jail term under amnesty laws and penal code amendments had been miscalculated.

Extradited to Turkey in 2000 after Italy pardoned him, Agca was convicted of the murder of prominent journalist Abdi Ipekci, two armed robberies and escaping from prison, crimes all dating back to the 1970s.

In rambling letters from prison, he has fed suggestions he is mentally disturbed, asking also to team up with best-selling "Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown for a novel called "The Vatican's Code" and volunteering to go to Afghanistan to kill Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Others, however, believe he is a sly operator playing the fool.

More than 50 foreign publishers and movie-makers have offered to buy Agca's story in the hope he may finally shed light on his attempt on the pope, lawyers said.

Agca also wants to go to the Vatican to visit the tomb of John Paul II, who died in 2005, and meet his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, they said.