Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish nationalist who attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981, has written a book in which he claims to reveal, once and for all, "the truth about the so-called Bulgarian connection in the assassination attempt," according to the Sofia News Agency. Over the years, Ali Agca has given a number of different accounts of the assassination attempt and has made public statements that have caused some to question his sanity, including a September 2006 letter to Pope Benedict XVI, in which he claimed to have knowledge derived from "Western intelligence services" that the Holy Father's life would be in danger if he traveled to Turkey as planned in November 2006. (The trip went off without any problems.)
The book, The Agca Code, "will be published after [Ali Agca] leaves prison," claims Fatih Ali, Ali Agca's publicist, in an exclusive interview with the Sofia News Agency. Sergei Antonov, one of the Bulgarians whom Ali Agca had accused of orchestrating the plot (at the behest of the Soviet KGB), recently died at the age of 59.
While offering no details about the contents of the book, Fatih Ali makes the astounding claim that "Pope Benedict XVI knows much about the reasons for keeping Agca in jail. He knows many things." Ali Agca was sentenced by an Italian court to life in prison in July 1981, but he was pardoned by Italian president Carlo Ciampi in 2000, at the request of Pope John Paul II. He was returned to Turkey, where he has since been serving another life sentence for the murder of a newspaper editor in 1979. Briefly paroled in 2006, Ali Agca was returned to prison eight days later, and his case continues to be examined by the Turkish courts. Fatih Ali claims that his client could be released in as soon as two months.