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The pope met and forgave Agca in 1983 while the gunman was serving a 19-year sentence in an Italian prison. Photo by flickr.com
The gunman who attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981, Mehmet Ali Agca, has been released from jail in Turkey and promptly proclaimed that he is “the Christ eternal”.
Agca served 19 years in an Italian prison for shooting John Paul, and another 10 years in Turkey for the earlier murder of a Turkish newspaper editor. The pope met and forgave Agca in 1983 while the gunman was serving his sentence.
In a statement issued on his release, he said "I proclaim the end of the world. All the world will be destroyed in this century. Every human being will die in this century...I am the Christ eternal".
Turkish media say Agca is now to be taken to a military facility and then to a hospital.
Agca said in a letter given to reporters last Wednesday "I will answer to all of these questions in the next weeks."
In 1981, John Paul II was shot and critically wounded in St Peter's Square by Agca, an expert gunman. Soviet spies were blamed for allegedly ordering the assassination attempt.
Mehmet Ali Agca later admitted he had two Bulgarian accomplices in Rome at the time, including Zilo Vassilev, the Bulgarian military attache in Italy.
He claims to have received two months of training in weaponry and terrorist tactics in Syria as a member of the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine paid for by the Communist Bulgarian government, although this has been questioned.
A decade after the passing of Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez, a controversial decision by his sons has sparked debate within literary circles, as reported by BBC
A Dutch company, which was involved in salvaging the Kursk submarine, is drawing up a plan to retrieve the Vera Su ship, which is stranded in the Yaylata area on Bulgaria's northern Black Sea coast.
Russia must release the Ukrainian sailors who were the detained at the Kerch Strait, Bulgaria’s Premier Boyko Borissov said within the frameworks of the European Council in Brussels, reported the Bulgarian National Radio.
About 100 migrant workers gathered outside a police station to protest against the arrest of their bosses.
Hundreds of numismatics lovers of all ages from early dawn have come to the BNB in anticipation of acquiring the invaluable 10-leva coin to be honored by the Bulgarian Euro Presidency.
The latest album of the Icelandic singer, Bjork, will be sold for cryptocurrency, the bitcoin.
A young man from Chirpan has died after spending months in a coma following a violent assault that reportedly began over a dispute involving cigarettes
A 53-year-old man with a criminal record has been detained in Bulgaria during a targeted police operation against vote buying, carried out in the village of Brestnitsa in the Lovech region
A criminal network linked to Bulgaria has been accused of defrauding dozens of elderly people in northern Greece through an elaborate telephone scam that resulted in losses exceeding 600,000 euros, according to Kathimerini.
A premeditated murder investigation is underway after a violent incident in the village of Kokalyane near Sofia, where a man is accused of fatally stabbing another person inside a garage that had been adapted for living
Italian authorities have launched an investigation into a large-scale scheme involving the illegal export of hazardous waste to Eastern Europe, with five Bulgarian nationals among those under scrutiny
Authorities in Bulgaria report a significant escalation in efforts to combat election-related violations, with 183 individuals detained in connection with crimes against electoral rights
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