Pope's jailed attacker barred from funeral

ISTANBUL - Turkish authorities have rejected a request from Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who shot and gravely wounded Pope John Paul in 1981, to leave prison to attend the pontiff's funeral, his lawyer said.

The Pope forgave his would-be killer two years after the shooting that would mark the start of his slow decline in health.

"Our application was denied. It appears to have been a government initiative. We don't have enough time before the funeral to appeal," Agca's lawyer Mustafa Demirdag told Reuters.

"Mehmet Ali will be very sad when he learns this."

Agca, 47, is in a maximum security prison in Istanbul, having been extradited for murder and robbery after serving 19 years in Italy for the assassination attempt.

Italian authorities pardoned him at the Pope's behest in 2000.

Agca had applied for a short compassionate release, which Turkish law allows for some prisoners, usually so that they can attend the funerals of family members.

"I have lost my spiritual brother. I share in the mourning of my Christian Catholic people," Agca wrote in a rambling "open letter to the world", in which he also repeated his claim to be the "second messiah".

Agca's family members may still attend the funeral on Friday, Demirdag said. The Pope had received Agca's brother and mother at the Vatican over the years.

Agca shot the Pope in the abdomen during a general audience in St Peter's Square on the anniversary of the 1917 apparition of Jesus' mother, the Virgin Mary, near Fatima in Portugal.

The Pope said he believed the Virgin Mary had intervened to save his life. Agca has over the years insisted this made him part of a divine plan, which the Vatican has rejected.

"The divine plan has reached its conclusion. So we are at the end of the world," Agca wrote in the letter. He also said he was rewriting the Bible and would soon reveal "Fatima's secret".

Over the years, Agca has given conflicting reasons for his attempt on John Paul's life, including allegations of a conspiracy with Bulgaria's communist-era secret services and the Soviet KGB.

Agca belonged to a right-wing militant faction in Turkey in the late 1970s and was sentenced to prison for the 1979 murder of a liberal newspaper editor.

A year before travelling to Rome, he escaped from jail with suspected help from right-wing sympathisers in the Turkish security apparatus.

Turkish authorities have always denied any connection with Agca and have dismissed him as mentally unstable.

- REUTERS