Mehmet Ali Ağca, who attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981, has been released from prison in Turkey, the BBC said on January 18 2010.

Reports in Turkish media said that Ağca would now undergo a physical examination at the Gülhane Military Academy of Medicine to assess his fitness for military service. Although Ağca is now 52 he is technically eligible for military service, having failed to serve in the Turkish military in the first place.

A military hospital , however, had ruled in 2006 that he was unfit for mandatory service due to a "severe anti-social personality disorder", Turkish Zaman Daily said. This report was, however, found to be unsound by the defence ministry’s health department, Zaman said.

Ağca,s lawyer, Hacı Ali Özhan, was quoted as saying "Ağca is shocked and disappointed that he might be conscripted into military service". Özhan also said: "It is against his religious and philosophical beliefs to bear arms. There will also be difficulties in protecting Mehmet Ali Ağca’s life where thousands of people carry weapons."

A Turkish law allows individuals who spend many years in prison to declare themselves ineligible for military service.

According to world media,  Ağca has already set a price for telling his story. This includes a two million euro fee for an interview and another five million euro for the rights to two books he has already written.

Ağca served 19 years in an Italian prison for shooting Pope John Paul II, and another 10 years in Turkey for the earlier murder of a newspaper editor.

Ağca's real motives for shooting Pope John Paul II are unclear, however, particularly in light of his constantly changing his motive - reportedly more than 100 times during the trial in Italy  for the attack.

On one occasion Ağca said that Bulgaria and the (former) Soviet Union were behind the attempted assassination. He subsequently reversed these claims and even stated that he was a new messiah.

However, his words were enough to tarnish Bulgaria's reputation and today many still talk about the "Bulgarian link" in the assassination against Pope John Paul II although the pontiff publicly rejected these claims during his 2002 visit to Bulgaria. "I have never believed that Bulgaria was behind the attack," he said at the time.

In 1983 John Paul himself announced he had forgiven Ağca after meeting him.

Three Bulgarians and three other Turkish nationals were also put on trial by Italian authorities as part of the court case against Ağca. They were all acquitted.

One of these defendants, Bulgarian Sergei Antonov, who in 1981 was deputy head of the Rome desk of Bulgaria's Balkan Airlines, took the most serious blow during the trial.

Antonov was acquitted on March 29 1986 due to "lack of sufficient evidence." After remaining in jail for three years, he returned to Bulgaria and lived quietly with his elderly mother, reportedly in poor mental health. He died alone in 2007 having apparently never recovered from the trauma of his detention in Italian custody.