Venezuelan-born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, once one of the world's most wanted criminals, has been convicted of first degree murder over 1974 Paris attack.
ADVERTISEMENTThe international terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal has been given a life sentence for the 1974 grenade attack on a Paris shopping arcade.
Venezuelan-born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez , once one of the world’s most wanted criminals, was convicted in France of first degree murder.
Two people were killed in the Paris explosion and 34 injured.
Carlos will now serve his third life sentence – having already been convicted of deadly attacks in France in the 1970s and 80s.
Carlos the Jackal gets life sentence for 1974 Paris attack #AFPpic.twitter.com/Tf9863ZPdz
— Aurelia BAILLY (@AureliaBAILLY) March 28, 2017
The head of the Association of the Victims of Terrorism, Guillaume Denoix De Saint Marc, said: “It’s for the victims that it changes everything.
“Today, things have been said, justice has given its verdict, which 43 years later has an extraordinary symbolic power.
“It’s been 43 years that the victims have been waiting to know who was responsible for this attack.
“Today we know, it’s Carlos.”
The 67-zear-old pleaded innocent and denied involvement in the incident.
His lawyer has repeatedly argued against holding the trial, arguing the attack was long ago and that sentencing jailed Carlos would have little effect.
Francis Vuillemin said: “We don’t even know what kind of grenade exploded in the Saint-Germain drugstore.
“But Carlos is convicted.
“The truth of the media pervaded the truth of justice. The truth of the media permeated up to the judges’ minds.”
Who is Carlos the Jackal and why is he on trial? https://t.co/VUXYt5Mde2pic.twitter.com/DU5D3FZXkq
— The Week UK (@TheWeekUK) March 13, 2017
He added that Carlos will appeal.
One of the life sentences he is already serving in France is for the murder of two French police officers and an informant in June 1975.
The other is for the 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.
At the start of his trial two weeks ago, Ramirez described himself as a “professional revolutionary”.
The Marxist militant and self-dubbed “elite gunman“became a symbol of Cold War anti-imperialism and a public enemy of Western governments.
Carlos was finally captured in Sudan in 1994.