Mehmet Ali Ağca Criminal
Mehmet Ali Ağca (Turkish pronunciation: [ˈaːdʒa]; born January 9, 1958) is a Turkish assassin who murdered left-wing journalist Abdi İpekçi on February 1, 1979, and later shot and wounded John Paul II'>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 and converted to Christianity, 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.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 which was denied.