Following his extradition to Turkey, he was imprisoned for the 1979 murder of Abdi İpekçi and for two bank raids carried out in the 1970s. Ağca was arrested on 25 June and incarcerated in the Maltepe Military Prison. He fled to Bulgaria on 25 November and was sentenced to death "in absentia". Ağca was extradited to Turkey in 2000 by benefiting from the Conditional Amnesty Law. This consideration granted to the ex-convict elicited strong reactions. Both cases about Ağca were merged and tried before the Kadıköy 1st High Criminal Court. The single trial concerned the hijacking of Cengiz Aydos's taxi in 1979, robbing the Yıldırım jewelry store in Kızıltoprak on 22 March 1979 and stealing money from the Fruko soda storage on 4 April 1979. On 18 January 2000, the judges dismissed the charges because of the statute of limitation on the case filed for the jewelry store robbery and for "breach of the Firearms Act" (law no. 6136). For embezzlement and money theft Ağca was sentenced to 36 years of imprisonment. Ağca's lawyers applied for their client's release under Law no. 4516 on Parole and Deferral of Penalties in December 2000. Their request was denied by the 1st High Criminal Court of Kartal. The lawyers filed an appeal against this decision, but the appeals court upheld the ruling. Ağca's life sentence was reduced to 10 years in prison for murder under a Turkish law that shortened prison sentences if served in a foreign prison. The money-laundering conviction and 36-year sentence were overturned because of the statute of limitations for robbery, which was 7 years under Turkish law.