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A French court has convicted the man known as Carlos the Jackal — once the world's most-wanted fugitive — of a deadly 1974 attack on a Paris shopping arcade and sentenced him to life in prison for the third time.
- Ramirez denounces the trial as "absurd" alleging he is being prosecuted for "phoney matters"
- He is already serving two life sentences for killing police officers and a string of attacks
- Defence lawyers allege that heavy media coverage influenced the judges' decision
The Venezuelan, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, is already serving two life sentences in France for deadly attacks in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Marxist militant and self-dubbed "elite gunman" became a symbol of Cold War anti-imperialism and public enemy number one for Western governments.
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.
The 67-year-old Ramirez, white-haired now, denounced the trial as "absurd" in a statement before the verdict.
"I am being prosecuted for completely phoney matters," Ramirez, who wore a dark jacket and jeans, told the judges.
"It is up to you to defend France, to defend the interests of the French people."
Ramirez was charged with murder over the September 15, 1974 grenade attack on the Publicis drugstore in central Paris that killed two people and injured 34 others. He has denied involvement.
His lawyers had urged the special Paris court to acquit him, but the panel of five judges found him guilty after four hours of deliberation and handed down the life sentence requested by prosecutors. There is no jury in French terrorism trials.
Defence lawyers, alleging heavy media coverage had influenced the judges, said they would appeal.
"The judges didn't dare to acquit Carlos," lawyer Francis Vuillemin said outside the courtroom.
Throughout the two-week trial, Ramirez's lawyers repeatedly attacked the absence of many witnesses and the decision to hold the trial more than 40 years after the events.
At the start of the trial, Ramirez, who has been held in France for 23 years since being captured in Khartoum by French special forces, called himself a "professional revolutionary".
The two life sentences he is already serving in France are for the murder of two French police officers and an informant in June 1975 and for a series of attacks on trains, a train station and a Paris street in 1982 and 1983 that killed 11 people and wounded about 150 more.
The press gave him his nickname after a reporter saw a copy of Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal at Ramirez's London flat and mistakenly assumed it belonged to him.
Reuters/AP
Topics: prisons-and-punishment, murder-and-manslaughter, terrorism, france
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