Carlos The Jackal Faces Trial Again In France For 1974 Attack
Carlos the Jackal, considered by many as the most notorious terrorist in the 1970s and 80s, is set to face trial in France again for allegedly committing a 1974 grenade attack in the city.
The hand grenade attack Carlos the Jackal was accused of happened at a shopping center in the French capital’s Latin Quarter in September 1974. The attack killed two people and injured 34, according to ABC News. Carlos was arrested in the Sudan capital of Khartoum in 1994 by the elite French police after years of being on the run.
Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, is already facing two life terms over several killings committed in the name of Palestinian and communist causes.
Carlos the Jackal to go on trial again in France https://t.co/TJfRHEsP2x
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) March 13, 2017
Ramirez, 67, is scheduled to face three judges in the Paris court. The infamous world terrorist pleaded not guilty and his lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, said the trial was a waste of time and money.
“What exactly is the point of having a trial so long after the events?” she told the Paris court.
George Holleaux, an attorney representing the victims and their kin, pointed out that his clients are looking forward to seeing Carlos the Jackal in court.
“The victims have been waiting so long for Ramirez to be judged and convicted. Their wounds have never healed,” Holleaux said.
As Ramirez denies the charges, he also disowned a 1979 interview with Al-Watan Al-Arabi magazine in which he admitted that he had thrown the grenade into the shop.
The prosecution claims that the grenade attack was related to a hostage situation at the French embassy in the Hague, which occurred two days earlier. Investigators came to this conclusion after finding out that the grenade used in the attack was from the same batch as those thrown by the Hague hostage-takers — which also happen to be the same ones that had been stolen from a U.S. military base in 1972. Another grenade from the same batch was found inside the Paris home of Carlos’s mistress as well.
The case against Carlos the Jackal is based on witness testimonies from his former brothers-in-arms in the terrorist group he was affiliated with.
The notorious international terrorist has been very vocal about his hatred of Jews and the Jewish state on several occasions in the past, and he continues to do so even in prison. In 2014, Carlos the Jackal hurled anti-Semitic verbal attacks on a female prison official, calling her “Israeli,” “Zionist,” and a “dirty Jew,” as previously reported by the Jerusalem Post. He was later fined for the offense.
Carlos was also involved in another antisemitic incident in 2009, in which he launched a campaign endorsing France’s anti-Zionist party. Not long after he had blamed Israel for framing him for three murder charges, he expressed his support for the anti-Israel party. These incidents are just two among many where he issued anti-Israel sentiments, the most prominent being that time when he called Israel “the first terrorist state in history.”
Ramirez was dubbed “Carlos the Jackal” by the media, named after a fictional terrorist in a 1971 Frederick Forsyth novel entitled The Day of the Jackal, which went on to become a film.
At 24, The Venezuelan-born Ramirez joined the Populaar Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and then trained as a militant revolutionary.
A few years after, Carlos committed his first terrorist attack, the victim being Joseph Edward Sieff, the then-president of Marks and Spencers, a prominent store in London. Sieff, however, survived the attack, which involved a gunshot to the head.
Calling himself a “professional revolutionary,” Carlos the Jackal was found guilty of four bomb attacks in Paris and Marseille in 1982 and 1983, which killed 11 people and injured 150.
Carlos also masterminded numerous attacks during the Cold War, including a hostage incident in Vienna at the 1975 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
[Featured Image by Michel Lipchitz/AP Images]
