|
Pope attacker shouldn't be free
12/01/2006 13:52 - (SA)
Istanbul - The release from jail on Thursday of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who tried to kill Pope John Paul II and was convicted of slaying a Turkish journalist, is a "grave" legal error, says former justice minister Hikmet Sami Turk.
Turk, who oversaw Agca's extradition from Italy in 2000, said the gunman should not have been released until at least 2012, even if he benefited from the most favourable reductions and amendments in Turkish law.
Agca was freed from jail on Thursday after serving almost 25 years in Italian and Turkish prisons, amid a heated debate about the legal grounds of his release.
Turkish judicial authorities were yet to make an official statement to explain exactly from what laws he had benefited.
Presidential pardon
Turk said: "His release is a grave mistake", saying prosecutors might appeal the decision in the coming days.
Agca was extradited to Turkey in June 2000 on an Italian presidential pardon after serving 19 years for shooting and seriously wounding pope John Paul II in 1981.
In Turkey, he was sentenced to seven years in jail for two armed robberies in the 1970s and was also supposed to serve a reduced 10-year sentence for murdering prominent Turkish journalist Abdi Ipekci in 1979.
The Ipekci family lawyer was also outraged at Agca's release and vowed to pursue the affair at the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights if necessary.
Nationalist elements
Attorney Turgut Kazan said: "The law has been assassinated today."
The former minister likened Agca's release to his escape from prison in 1979, clad in a military uniform and allegedly with the help of nationalist elements within the state establishment.
Asked whether he was suggesting that Agca was freed on a deliberately erroneous calculation, Turk said: "Unfortunately, one cannot help, but consider such a possibility."
After escaping from prison, Agca resurfaced at St Peter's square, in front of the Vatican, on May 13 1981, with a smoking gun in his hand, having fired four shots at John Paul II as the pontiff drove in an open car for his weekly general audience.
- AFP
|
News
