Carlos the Jackal in new trial
October 7, 2014
On Tuesday, a French court ordered Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known in the press as "Carlos the Jackal," to stand trial over a 1974 grenade attack in Paris that killed two people and injured more than 30.
The 64-year-old Venezuelan national received his first life sentence in 1997 for a 1975 triple murder. In 2011, Carlos received a second life sentence for 1982-83 bomb attacks on two French passenger trains, a train station in Marseille and a Libyan magazine office in Paris. Those attacks left 11 people dead.
Carlos denied any involvement in the attacks, and claimed during an appeal that files used from East Germany's Stasi police were unreliable as evidence.
Officials believe the 1982-83 bombings came in retaliation for France's detention of two members of a militant group Carlos led with Stasi support.
Carlos the Jackal earned most of his notoriety for masterminding the 1975 assault on an OPEC meeting in Vienna, where he and five others took about 70 people hostage, including 11 oil ministers. Three people, including an Austrian policeman, were killed during the attack.
The group demanded to be flown to Algeria, where most of the hostages were released. The guerillas gave themselves up to the authorities there and were set free a few days later.
Carlos was finally arrested in Sudan in 1994 and transferred to France, where he has been held ever since.
jr/mkg (AFP, AP)