Ilich Ramirez Sanchez will appeal his third life sentence. He received the punishment for a 1974 bombing in Paris that killed two people. The terrorist has used previous court appearances as a personal stage.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo
Advertisement
In what will be his last chance in court, on Monday the terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as "Carlos the Jackal," was to appeal the life sentence he received last year for a 1974 Paris bombing.
Francis Vuillemin, Sanchez's longtime lawyer along with Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, who is now his partner, said Sanchez would be asking for an acquittal.
The Venezuela-born Sanchez, 68, has denied responsibility for the attack at the Publicis Drugstore at Saint-Germain-des-Pres in Paris' Left Bank, which left two dead and 34 injured when a grenade was thrown from the mezzanine restaurant into the crowded gallery below.
The sentence was Sanchez's third life term. He is already serving two life sentences for his role in attacks that left 11 people dead in 1982-83.
He became one of the world's most notorious fugitives in the 1970s and '80s, after he carried out a number of pro-Palestinian attacks.
Life sentence for Carlos the Jackal # 16.12.2011 09 Uhr # Journal (englisch)
01:38
This browser does not support the video element.
Though no DNA or fingerprints were found after the bombing, judges determined that all evidence pointed to Sanchez.
"There are incredible weaknesses in this case: witnesses manipulated by the security services, liars, fake evidence," Vuillemin said.
At the start of Sanchez's trial in 2017, he bragged that: "No one in the Palestinian resistance has executed more people than I have."
Sanchez was reported to have claimed responsibility for the attack in a 1979 interview with the Arabic-language French news magazine Al Watan Al Arabi, but he says he never gave the interview.
Sanchez arrives at the Criminal Court of the Palais de Justice in Paris in 2013Image: Getty Images/AFP/B. Guay
Prosecutors have said the Publicis Drugstore bombing was one of several attacks intended to pressure French authorities to free a member of the Japanese Red Army who had been arrested at Orly airport.
The Japanese Red Army was aligned with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, of which Sanchez had become one of the main operatives in Europe.
The case took so long to go to trial because it was first dismissed for lack of evidence before being reopened when Sanchez was arrested and imprisoned in France. His lawyers continued to introduce challenges throughout the proceedings.
Sanchez's nickname came from a fictional terrorist in the 1971 Frederick Forsyth novel, The Day of the Jackal.
France's new anti-terror law explained
French president, Emmanuel Macron has decided to implant into ordinary French law many of the provisions of the state of emergency signed by his predecessor Francois Hollande after terror attacks in November 2015.
Image: REUTERS/Youssef Boudlal
Restriction of movement
People with links to terrorist organizations can be forbidden from leaving their town or city of residence and required to report to police. They can also be banned from specified places. This is a toning down of the emergency law, which allowed partial house arrest. Its provisions were used not just against suspected terrorists, but also to ban suspected radical leftists from demonstrations.
Image: Reuters/Ch. Platiau
House searches
Authorities will be able to carry out searches of homes, but only to prevent acts of terrorism. In contrast to the emergency powers, searches must first be approved by a judge. Of the 3,600 house searches carried out in the seven months after the state of emergency came into effect, only six resulted in terrorism-related criminal proceedings, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.
Image: picture alliance/AP Photo/L. Notarianni
Closing places of worship
Authorities retain the power to close places of worship where extremist ideas are propagated, including promoting hatred or discrimination, as well as inciting violence or supporting acts of terrorism. Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, has complained the law did not go far enough in combating the "Islamist ideology that is waging war on us."
Image: REUTERS/Christian Hartmann
Identity checks around ports and airports
Security forces can check the identity of people within a 10-kilometre radius of ports and international airports. The government's original draft bill proposed a 20-kilometre radius. Le Monde calculated this would have covered 67 per cent of the French population, including 36 of the country's largest 39 cities. Unlike the other powers, this one will not expire automatically in 2020.
Image: Reuters/B. Tessier
Security perimeters around events
This continues emergency powers under which security forces can search property and frisk persons at and near major public events that could be targeted by terrorists.
Other provisions include a civil servant working in an area related to security or defence can be transferred or dismissed if he or she is found to hold radical opinions. Soldiers can also be discharged for similar motives.
