Carlos the Jackal faces trial again in France

PARIS: Carlos the Jackal, the perpetrator of headline-grabbing attacks in the 1970s and early 1980s, goes on trial in France yesterday for the deadly bombing of a Paris shop more than 40 years ago.

With attention in France now focused on the ever-present threat of a jihadist attack, the trial in Paris will reach back to a time when Europe was repeatedly targeted by ruthless groups sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

Carlos, 67, a Venezuelan whose real name is Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez, describes himself as a ‘professional revolutionary’ and was dubbed ‘Carlos the Jackal’ by the press when he was one of the world’s most wanted terror suspects.

The nickname came from a fictional terrorist in the 1971 Frederick Forsyth novel, ‘The Day of the Jackal’, which was turned into a popular film.

Arrested in the Sudanese capital Khartoum in 1994 by elite French police, Carlos is already serving a life sentence for the murders of two policemen killed in Paris in 1975 and that of a Lebanese revolutionary.

He was also found guilty of four bombings in Paris and Marseille in 1982 and 1983, some targeting trains, which killed a total of 11 people and injured nearly 150.

Carlos will be judged by three judges for the attack on the Drugstore Publicis, a busy shop once located in Saint- Germaindes-Pres in the heart of Paris.

In the late afternoon of September 15, 1974, a grenade was lobbed into the entrance of the store, killing two men and leaving 34 people injured.

Georges Holleaux, a lawyer representing the two widows of the men killed and 16 other people affected, said they relished the chance to finally see Carlos in court. — AFP