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Ankara, Jan 12: The Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II nearly 25 years ago has been released from prison.

Mehmet Ali Agca had been imprisoned in the Turkish city of Istanbul for other offences since being extradited in 2000 after 19 years in Italian jails.

The 48-year-old wants to work for democracy upon his release, his lawyer told the Associated Press.

Agca shot the Pope in St Peter's Square in 1981. The pontiff later visited him in jail and publicly forgave him.

The gunman was pardoned by the Italian authorities in 2000 and extradited to Turkey, where he was jailed for the 1979 murder of a left-wing Turkish journalist and two bank robberies.

The Turkish government should guarantee Agca's security because he knows so many secrets and he may be killed

Last week, a Turkish court ruled Agca had completed his term for those offences.

His release has been divisive in Turkey.

The daughter of the journalist he killed published a front-page letter in the national newspaper Milliyet calling him "not just the murderer of my father.... I see him as our national assassin".

Nationalist supporters cheered Agca's release, throwing flowers at the car that took him away from the prison.

"Mehmet Ali Agca is a role model for everyone who loves the Turkish nation," Seyfi Yilmaz told the Associated Press news agency outside the prison.

Agca's lawyer, Mustafa Demirbag, said his client was relishing the prospect of freedom and wanted to put the assassination attempt behind him.

"He says: 'I want to extend the hand of peace and friendship to everyone. I want to engage a struggle for democracy and culture'," Mr Demirbag told AP.

Soviet 'involvement'

Agca was a 23-year-old known criminal with links to Turkish far-right paramilitaries at the time of the attack in Rome.

The motive for the attack remains a mystery, but there were claims that the Soviet KGB, the secret service of the former East Germany, the Stasi, and its Bulgarian counterpart were involved.

 
One of Italy's most respected magistrates in the 1980s, who probed the attack at the time, warned on Wednesday that Agca's life was at risk because of the many secrets he knows.

Ferdinando Imposimato is convinced of Soviet bloc involvement. The Pope at the time was preaching a message that challenged Soviet Communism's collectivist ideology.

"I think the Turkish government should guarantee Agca's security because he knows so many secrets and he may be killed," he said in an interview with Reuters Television.

"The best thing would be to keep him in jail," he said.

Agca fired several times at the late Pope John Paul II as he waved to crowds from an open car.

The critically wounded pontiff underwent emergency surgery for serious wounds to the abdomen and hand. According to his own account, he only just survived.

He met his attacker two years later in an Italian prison, when he publicly forgave him.