French justice sentenced Carlos “El Chacal” to life imprisonment and his defense asked Venezuela to request his extradition



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Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as "Charles the Jackal" (Photo: REUTERS)
Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as “Carlos the Jackal” (Photo: REUTERS)

The French justice sentenced this Thursday to life imprisonment the Venezuelan Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, alias Carlos “El Chacal”, for an attack on a Parisian shopping arcade in 1974 which left two dead and 34 injured.

Su abogada, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, He urged the Venezuelan government to ask the French state to transfer its client.

“I advised him against” to appeal in cassationCoutant-Peyre told reporters. “It is up to Venezuela to ask the French state for its transfer”, added Carlos’ lawyer, who during the trial expressed his desire to serve his sentence in his native country.

After two days of testing, the court underlined the “particular violence” of this attack carried out to “put pressure on the state”. The condemned of 71 years old received the announcement of the sentence standing and with a “Thank you so much”.

A few TV cameras are recording files with case documentation before the trial begins (Photo: EFE / Ian Langsdon)
A few TV cameras are recording files with case documentation before the trial begins (Photo: EFE / Ian Langsdon)

A court of appeal had confirmed the life imprisonment for Carlos “El Chacal” in 2018 for throwing a grenade at the Drugstore Publicis gallery, in the heart of Paris, in 1974. However, the Court of Cassation canceled in 2019 partially this sentence, although without calling into question his guilt, for which he ordered that a new trial be held solely on the sentence.

The magistrates thus follow the opinion of the prosecutor who had requested the life imprisonment for this act of “indiscriminate and unprecedented violence”, which represents the “first indiscriminate attack” in France.

Your lawyer, who does not rule out bringing the case before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), nevertheless considered that his client, figure of the “anti-imperialist” armed struggle of the 1970s and 1980s, it was “publishable since 2014”, although he had to remain in prison while the case was open.

The Drugstore attack took place on September 15, 1974 in Paris. At around 5:10 p.m., a grenade thrown from an upstairs restaurant exploded on the ground floor of the then popular shopping arcade.

An old photo of Carlos "The Jackal"
An old photo of Carlos “El Chacal”

For the prosecution, They wanted to free a Japanese detained at Orly, a member of the Japanese Red Army, a far-left armed group that simultaneously kidnapped hostages at the French Embassy in The Hague.

This movement was close to a branch of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), with an armed wing in Europe including Ramírez Sánchez had become one of its leaders.

In the absence of DNA samples and confessions, the Venezuelan was convicted in 2017 of a series of charges, including the testimony of a repentant former comrade in arms, in English Hans-Joachim Klein.

According to research, the grenade used came from a consignment stolen from a military base in Germany, as well as some found in the house of Carlos’ mistress and those abandoned during the hostage-taking in The Hague.

Image of Carlos "The Jackal" during the trial (Photo: AFP)
Image of Carlos “El Chacal” during the trial (Photo: AFP)

Carlos himself claimed responsibility for this action in a late 1979 interview with the magazine. El Watan Al Arabi. But later, as an accused, he denied giving such an interview.. During his appeal trial in March 2018, “The Jackal“He recounted his years of flight and political struggle, assuring that violence had been” imposed “on him, but he avoided acknowledging the crimes for which he was convicted.

With this life sentence, the Venezuelan, in prison in France since his arrest in 1994 in Sudan, totaling three, after the triple murder in 1975 in Paris and four bombings in France in 1982 and 1983 (11 dead and 191 wounded).

Carlos had been in the news from the start of the third trial because he entered the platform shortly before 9.45 a.m. smiling, wearing a dark jacket and blue shirt, and with the mask under his nose, and said: I have been on forced vacation for 27 and a half years”. In his first words, he denounced the search of his clothes, assuring that in 27 years they had never found anything on him.

“The Jackal”

Carlos "The Jackal" during one of the trials against him (AP)
Carlos “El Chacal” during one of the trials against him (AP)

Ilich Ramirez Sánchez was born on October 12, 1949 in Caracas. His father was a Marxist business lawyer who named his two other sons Lenin and Vladimir. At 15, he joined the Venezuelan Communist Party, then underground, and later he went to study at Moscow, at University Patrice Lumumba.

In early 1971 and after having spent a training camp at Jordan attached to Palestine Liberation Front (PFLP) led by Georges habache. Be in the PFLP would adopt his nom de guerre, ‘Carlos‘, to whom the British newspaper The Guardian added the nickname ‘The Jackal’.

The French services responsible for investigating activities in France of PFLP they discovered Carlos on June 27, 1975, when the apartment of a Venezuelan was searched by indications of a Lebanese informantIn su huida, Carlos he killed two Parisian policemen and the Lebanese who had betrayed him.

(With information from AFP)

Read on:

A new trial has opened against the formidable Carlos “El Chacal”: the provocative sentence facing the judge
Third lawsuit against Carlos “El Chacal” for an attack on a gallery in Paris in 1974



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