The Jackal is back in court

ILICH Ramirez Sanchez, the convicted killer known to the world as Carlos the Jackal, returns to court today in a bid to overturn his conviction for masterminding bombings on French soil.

Now 63, Sanchez was serving a life term for murder when he was convicted two years ago of orchestrating the 1982 and 1983 attacks on two French passenger trains, a train station in Marseille and a Libyan magazine office in Paris. The attacks left 11 people dead.

They were believed to have been carried out in retaliation for France’s detention of two members of a militant group Carlos ran with the support of East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi. The investigation into the bombings was heading to a dead end until the release of secret Stasi files gave prosecutors sufficient evidence of his involvement to bring the case to court. The appeal today focused on whether evidence from these files is reliable. – BANGLADESH has set up a panel to raise the minimum wage for millions of garment workers, a minister said yesterday, as tens of thousands protested over poor conditions highlighted by a series of disasters.

“We’ve set up a minimum wage board for the garment sector,” textile minister Abdul Latif Siddique said.

A typical Bangladeshi garment worker takes home less than $40 a month, a wage Pope Francis has condemned as akin to slave labour. The minimum wage was last raised – by 80% – in November 2010.

The panel will include union representatives and factory owners, Siddique added. “There is no doubt the salaries will be hiked,” he said.

The announcement came as the death toll from the country’s worst industrial disaster climbed to 1 126, 19 days after a nine-storey garment factory complex in a suburb of Dhaka caved in and buried thousands of workers.

Workers at the country’s garment- manufacturing hub of Ashulia on the outskirts of Dhaka left their factories en masse yesterday to demand an increase in wages. “Up to 30 factories suspended production for the day as tens of thousands of workers refused to work,” additional police chief of Dhaka, Shyamol Kumar Mukharjee, said.

They also demanded the death penalty for Sohel Rana, owner of the collapsed Rana Plaza complex. He is accused of forcing labourers to work on April 24, the day of the collapse, even though cracks appeared in the building a day before.

Rana, a low-level official from the ruling Awami League party, is also accused of breaking construction laws by allowing factories to operate inside a commercial building designed for shops and banks.

Workers blocked a key highway for nearly two hours yesterday.

The government announced a high-level panel last week to inspect thousands of garment factories for building flaws, amid fears that Western labels will turn their backs on Bangladesh after a series of deadly accidents. –