Carlos the Jackal loses appeal against life sentence for 1974 attack in Paris
Left-wing militant Carlos the Jackal, who carried out terror attacks across the world, has had his appeal to reduce one of his life sentences rejected.
Carlos, born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, is serving three life sentences, the third which was passed in 2017 over a 1974 grenade attack on Paris’ Champs Elysees that killed two people and injured 36.
He has been in prison in France since he was captured in Sudan by French special forces in 1994.
The 71-year-old appeared in court hoping to reduce his jail term, but instead his third life sentence was confirmed, Paris Prosecutor’s Office said.
Carlos has always shirked any responsibility for the attack at the Drugstore Publicis but was linked to it by a former associate despite a lack of DNA evidence or fingerprints.
His first life sentence was for the 1975 murder of two French police officers and an informant, whilst the second came for attacks in 1982 and 1983 that killed 11 people and injured over 150.
He has already lost appeals against both sentences.
Carlos, a ‘professional revolutionary’ by his own admission, was born to a wealth family in Caracas.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, he became one of the world’s most wanted men particularly after taking part in an attack of the OPEC oil cartel in its headquarters in Vienna, in which three people were killed.
The incident followed a string of assaults on Western targets, including a failed assasination attempt on the vice president of the British Zionist Federation in 1973.
He was also involved in a failed bombing on London’s Bank Hapoalim, and a car bomb of three French newspapers.
He was given the nickname ‘The Jackal’ after a journalist reportedly spotted Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal in his home.
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