TURKEY's supreme court on Friday overturned a lower court's ruling to release Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turk who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981.

The court’s criminal department overturned the ruling of Kartal criminal court three days after Justice Minister Cemil Cicek formally asked for the overturn. The supreme court said the time Agca had served in an Italian prison should not have been deducted from his term in prison in Turkey.

Agca, 48, was released on January 12 from Istanbul’s Kartal prison after initially serving 19 years in an Italian jail for trying to assassinate the popular pope. At John Paul II's behest, Agca was pardoned in 2000. He was then extradited to Turkey to serve a separate sentence for his 1979 murder of prominent Turkish journalist Abdi Ipekci.

After Agca was set free, Cicek asked the court of appeals to annul Agca's release, arguing he should serve a full 10-year term for killing Ipekci.

On May 13, 1981, Agca shot Pope John Paul II when the pope was riding in an open car in St Peter's Square in Rome. John Paul was hit in the abdomen, left hand and right arm but recovered beacuse Agca's bullets missed vital organs.