Carlos, real name Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, denies throwing grenade that killed two and injured 34 in Paris, 1974
Venezuelan extremist Carlos the Jackal went back on trial today after appealing the life sentence handed to him last year for a deadly 1974 bombing in Paris.
Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, is already serving two life sentences for organising murders and attacks in the 1970s and 1980s during his pro-Palestinian campaign of terror.
Once the world’s most-wanted terrorist, Carlos, now 68, has long denied involvement in the attack on the Drugstore Publicis shopping center in the French capital’s Latin Quarter.
The attack killed two people and injured 34 when a grenade was thrown from the mezzanine restaurant into the crowded gallery below.
The case was initially dismissed for lack of evidence but Carlos, the only defendant in the original trial, was found guilty even though no DNA or fingerprints were found.
Lawyer Francis Vuillemin said the defense team will plead for acquittal.
‘It’s a very tough fight but the hardest battles are sometimes the most beautiful,’ he said.
‘Ilich Ramirez Sanchez is still his old self, in great shape, despite being 68 years old. He is going to fight like he always does, at each trial.’
At the time of the Paris attack, Carlos was a 24-year-old volunteer with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), but hadn’t achieved worldwide notoriety yet.
When police arrived at the Publicis pharmacy, they found devastation with all the windows shattered, multiple bloodstains and a hole in the marble slab of the floor where the grenade fell.
Carlos, now 68, has long denied involvement in the attack on the Drugstore Publicis shopping center in the French capital’s Latin Quarter
The two men who died were struck by metal shards that perforated vital organs and caused internal bleeding, according to court documents.
As arguably the most notorious international terrorist of his generation, Carlos was responsible for a series of atrocities across France in the 1970s and 80s, slaughtering victims including police officers.
Mass murder: Carlos, pictured, was already serving two life terms for terror offences. He was convicted in 1997 of murdering two French police officers and an informant in 1975 in Paris. In 2011 he was found guilty of masterminding attacks on two trains, a train station and a Paris street that killed 11 people and wounded about 150 more
Bomb blast: Police officers are pictured working at the scene after a bomb attack at a Paris pharmacy on September 15, 1974 for which terror chief Carlos was given a third life term
He was the world’s most wanted fugitive during this period and has been in prison in France since his arrest in the Sudanese capital Khartoum in 1994 by French elite police.
Carlos was convicted in 1997 of murdering two French police officers and an informant in 1975 in Paris and in 2011 of masterminding attacks on two trains, a train station and a Paris street that killed 11 people and wounded about 150 more.
He sealed his notoriety in 1975 with the hostage-taking of OPEC oil ministers in Vienna in the name of the Palestinian struggle, and went on to become an international gun-for-hire with Soviet bloc protectors.
In the 1970s and ’80s, the Marxist militant and self-dubbed ‘elite gunman’ became a symbol of Cold War anti-imperialism and public enemy number one for Western governments.
Carlos was finally arrested in Sudan by the French intelligence services in 1994, 20 years after his first mission on French soil.