The man who shot and wounded the last Pope has written to Benedict XVI to warn him that his life is in danger following the controversy over his remarks about Islam and violence.

Mehmet Ai Agca, the Turkish gunman who tried to murder John Paul II in 1981 and is now in prison in Turkey, urged the Pope not to visit Turkey in November as planned.

"I write as one who knows about these matters very well," Agca said. "Your life is in danger. Don’t come to Turkey — absolutely not!"

The letter, published by La Repubblica, was seen in Rome as a friendly warning, not a threat. Pope John Paul II met Agca in his prison cell two years after the shooting and forgave his would-be assassin. Agca himself later repudiated his attempt on the pontiff’s life.

But ironically it was during a visit to Turkey by the Pope John Paul in 1979 that Agca had first escaped from jail and threatened to kill the Pope. He served 19 years in Italian jails after being found guilty of attempting to murder the Pope and was then extradited to Turkey to finish serving a sentence for the earlier murder of a Turkish newspaper editor.

In a remarkable turnaround, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Islamist Iranian President, also came to the defence of Pope Benedict today.

Addressing a press conference with Hugo Chavez, the left-wing, anti-American President of Venezuela, in Caracas, Mr Ahmadinejad said: "We respect the Pope, and all those interested in peace and justice."

He said he accepted the Vatican view that the pontiff’s words had been "taken out of context" and he was "given to understand" that the Pope had later modified them. He said Benedict had been "misinterpreted".

He also observed there was a contradiction between the Christian values of the West and the wars it had waged. "All the wars of the twentieth century were caused by European countries and the United States," he maintained.

Mr Ahmadinejad’s comments came only one day after Iran’s Supreme religious Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had said the Pope’s remarks were the "latest link" in "the chain of a conspiracy to set in train a new Crusade".

He said this followed the Danish cartoons satirising the prophet Muhammad and "the insulting remarks of some American and European politicians and newspapers about Islam... these remarks are very much a cause for regret and surprise coming from a senior Christian official".

The Pope said on Sunday he was "very sorry" about the offence his words, in a lecture at a German unioversity, had caused. He is to elaborate further at his weekly audience tomorrow.

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