Agca to be freed in 2010

State prosecutors have calculated January 18, 2010, as the date for the release from jail of Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981, the state Anatolian news agency said yesterday.

Agca, 48, was briefly freed from jail earlier this month, triggering a storm of protest in Turkey where he had been serving a sentence for the killing of a newspaper editor in the 1970s and also for robbery.

Last Friday, Turkey's Supreme Court ordered that Agca return to jail, saying it was too early for him to walk free. Anatolian said state prosecutors had recalculated the length of time remaining for Agca to stay behind bars, taking into account time already served along with other factors.

The 48-year-old 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.

Agca was then extradited to Turkey to serve time in an Istanbul jail for the 1979 murder of liberal newspaper editor Abdi Ipekci and other charges dating from the 1970s.

Under new Turkish laws, his time served in Italy was initially deducted from the 25 years left on his sentence in Turkey. But the Supreme Court ruled last Friday that this was not valid, paving the way for his return to jail.

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