An attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II occurred on May 13, 1981. Mehmet Ali Ağca shot and seriously wounded the Pope in the Vatican City\"s St. Peter\"s Square. Ağca was convicted for this crime in July 1981, and was deported to Turkey in 2001, after serving 20 years imprisonment.



Beginning in August 1980 Ağca began criss-crossing the Mediterranean region, changing passports and identities, perhaps to hide his point of origin in Sofia, Bulgaria. He entered Rome on May 10, 1981, coming by train from Milan.

According to Ağca\"s later testimony, he met with three accomplices in Rome, one a fellow Turk and two Bulgarians, with operation being commanded by Zilo Vassilev, the Bulgarian military attaché in Italy. He said that he was assigned this mission by Turkish mafioso Bekir Çelenk in Bulgaria. Le Monde diplomatique, however, has alleged that the assassination attempt was organized by Abdullah Çatlı \"in exchange for the sum of 3 million marks\", paid by Bekir Çelenk to the Grey Wolves.[1]