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French court convicts Venezuelan-born terrorist, who is already in prison for a 1975 triple murder
A French court has convicted the Venezuelan-born terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal of organising four deadly attacks in France in the 1980s and sentenced him to life in prison.
Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, is already serving a life sentence in a Paris prison for a triple murder in 1975. France does not have the death penalty.
In Thursday's verdict, the court found Ramírez guilty of instigating four attacks in France in 1982 and 1983 that killed 11 people and injured more than 140 others.
Ramírez denied any role in the attacks. He sowed fear across western European and Middle Eastern capitals during the cold war, and was believed to have links to hijackings and bombings for far-left and Palestinian terror groups.
Ramírez, relishing the rare public attention, kept the court's attention to the end of the six-week trial, speaking for five hours in his final testimony.
"I am a living archive. Most of the people of my level are dead," he said, reading from a spiral notebook in a speech that at times rambled far from the cases at hand. Three hours into it, he said, "Excuse me, I am taking my time, it's a small recapitulation."
In an emotional finale, he read a text in memory of Muammar Gaddafi, a sort of ideological brother who funded anti-Western attacks."This man did more than all the revolutionaries," Carlos said, sobs choking his voice as he ended the monologue by saying "long live the revolution!"
Three others were tried in absentia. The court convicted two of his accomplices, Palestinian Kamal Al-Issawi and German Johannes Weinrich, giving them life sentences, and acquitted a third, Christa Margot Frohlich.
