ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – The man who shot Pope John Paul II returned to prison Friday, after an appeals court ruled that he should serve more time for the killing of a Turkish journalist and other crimes.

Mehmet Ali Agca did not resist arrest hours earlier when police knocked on his Istanbul apartment door following the court’s ruling.

“I was waiting for you,” he told the officers, according to private NTV television.

He was driven to Kartal prison, the same Istanbul lockup that he was released from eight days ago.

The panel of appeals court judges overturned a lower court’s ruling that set Agca free on Jan. 12. He had served 19 years in an Italian prison for the 1981 attack on the pope and then another 51/2 years of a 10-year sentence in Turkey for murdering Turkish journalist Abdi Ipekci in 1979.

In ordering his release, the lower court counted the time served in Italy and said Agca had fulfilled his sentence, outraging many Turks. Justice Minister Cemil Cicek asked the court to review the case, and the judges ruled unanimously Friday that Agca go back to prison and serve more time.

“There is no legal basis to deduct Agca’s time in Italy from his prison terms he received in Turkey,” the court said.

Agca, 48, was taken to Istanbul police headquarters, where TV cameras showed him handcuffed and yelling in English, Turkish and Italian.

“I declare myself Messiah! I am not the son of God, I am Messiah!” shouted Agca, who has made similar outbursts before. “I am declaring the doomsday!”

Agca’s lawyer, Mustafa Demirbag, said: “The media won, the law lost.”

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Agca would be brought before a local prosecutor Saturday and “they will then do whatever is required.”

The prosecutor will decide how many more years Agca should serve. Reports have suggested he could be imprisoned until 2014.

The decision to free Agca outraged many Turks and came at a delicate time for Turkey, which aspires to membership in the European Union. Next week, the EU is to begin screening the country’s justice system.

“There was certainly quite a lot of public outcry in Turkey itself, and a state of unhappiness in general about the legal system,” political analyst Ilter Turan said. “There was a general expectation that he (Agca) would be called back to jail.”

Cicek had argued that Agca should serve a full 10-year sentence for killing Ipekci. He suggested the sentence should be counted from June 14, 2000, when Agca was extradited to Turkey from Italy. Agca also has been convicted in a factory robbery and for stealing a vehicle in 1979, and he could be ordered to serve an additional four years for each of those crimes.

Agca initially was sentenced to death for Ipekci’s murder, but a 1991 amnesty commuted that sentence to 10 years. In 2000, a court convicted him of the other crimes and sentenced him to 36 years. Another court then ruled he could not serve more than 36 years in all for his crimes.

A second amnesty in 2000 deducted 10 years from his time, but the appeals court Friday ruled that deduction invalid.

In 1979, Agca escaped from a military prison in Turkey after serving just five months.

He shot John Paul on May 13, 1981, as the pope rode in an open car in St. Peter’s Square and was captured immediately. The pontiff was hit in the abdomen, left hand and right arm, but the bullets missed vital organs. John Paul later visited Agca in prison in 1983 and forgave him.

Agca’s release from prison had prompted little Vatican comment.

“The case is fully in the hands of the Turkish justice system,” the Rev. Robert Necek told The Associated Press on Friday after the latest legal development.

Necek is spokesman for Krakow Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, who was John Paul’s personal secretary for more than 40 years until the pontiff’s death last year.

Before he shot the pope, Agca was affiliated with the Gray Wolves, a Turkish right-wing militant group.

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