Controversy over freed pope assailant

Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler said Saturday night that Mehmet Ali Agca, 48, has until Wednesday to show up at Istanbul's major military hospital, GATA, to undergo tests on whether or not he should be drafted into the army.

The former extreme right-wing militant, who shot and seriously wounded the pope in 1981, never did the military service that is compulsory for all Turks aged over 18.

"If he does not present himself to the hospital by then, he will be taken by force," Guler said.

But Agca's attorney, Mustafa Demirbag, disagreed.

"No, he does not have to go there for the moment," he told a group of reporters, without going into detail.

Guler also said that until the military decide what to do with him, Agca must check in at a police station twice a day.

But Agca never showed up and has not been seen in public since he disappeared from a back door at the GATA hospital shortly after his release Thursday.

"Agca is a free man," Demirbag said.

He can go wherever he wants, the lawyer said, stressing, however, that his client had no intention of fleeing overseas.

"Agca wants to forget about his life of 26 years ago," Demirbag said. "He wants a new life, he wants to get married."

Agca first came to public attention in Turkey in 1979, when he shot and killed one of Turkey's most prominent journalists, Abdi Ipekci, the chief editor and columnist of the liberal daily Milliyet.

He escaped from the prison where he was awaiting trial and showed up at St. Peter's Square, Rome, on May 13, 1981, where he shot and seriously wounded John Paul II.