Reuters AlertNet Lite - Carlos the Jackal faces new French trial

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Carlos the Jackal faces new French trial

27 Nov 2006 19:39:39 GMT
Source: Reuters

PARIS, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Carlos the Jackal, serving life in France for the murders of two French secret service agents, faces trial for attacks that killed 11 people and wounded 200 in the early 1980s, a judicial source said on Monday.

The Paris public prosecutors' office has requested that he be sent for trial, the judicial source said. Such requests must be approved by a judge but they are rarely turned down.

Prosecutors say Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, launched the bomb attacks in a bid to win the release of his companion Magdalena Kopp, a German former revolutionary who was being detained in France at the time.

The 57-year-old Venezuelan is charged with the March 29, 1982, bombing of a Paris-Toulouse train; the April 22, 1982, attack outside the Paris offices of newspaper Al Watan; and the Dec. 31, 1983, attacks on a TGV high-speed train and a Marseille station.

If convicted, any sentence will have to run concurrently with his existing life term handed down at his trial in 1996 for the 1975 deaths of the secret service agents and their informer.

At the time of the 1980s attacks Carlos, was close to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, running a multinational group of activists throughout the globe with the support of the secret services of the then Communist bloc.

Carlos was once one of the most wanted men in the world, having shot to notoriety with the 1975 assault on an OPEC meeting in Vienna in which he and five others took 70 people hostage, including 11 oil ministers.

In 1994, France spirited Carlos out of his refuge in Sudan, where he had converted to Islam and married a local woman under Muslim rites. He has since married his French lawyer.

The judge handling the case is expected to decide whether to order a trial in the coming weeks, the judicial source said. The case is not expected to be heard until late 2007.

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Last updated:Sat Jan 20 00:40:28 2007