PARIS: Carlos the Jackal, the perpetrator of headline-grabbing attacks in the 1970s and early 1980s, goes on trial in France on Monday 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 militant attack, the trial in Paris will reach back to a time when Europe was repeatedly targeted by hardline groups. 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 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-Germain-des-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
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