Paris court refuses to cut life sentence for Carlos the Jackal

Notorious militant fails to have one of his life sentences reduced

Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known as "Carlos the Jackal", in a Paris court in November 2000. Reuters
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Carlos the Jackal, the Venezuelan militant behind some of the biggest terrorist attacks of the 1970s and 1980s, failed on Thursday to have one of his three life sentences in France reduced.

After hearings that began on Wednesday, a special criminal court in Paris confirmed the life sentence for a 1974 grenade attack on the Publicis Drugstore, an upmarket shopping centre in the French capital.

Carlos, who carried out several attacks in support of the Palestinian cause, was convicted of murder in 2017 and sentenced to life in prison, a verdict that was upheld on appeal.

But in 2019, France's highest court sent the case back to court to reconsider his sentence.

It said Carlos should not have been convicted of carrying and using a grenade, because it amounted to being found guilty of the same offence twice.

The self-styled revolutionary, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, has been behind bars in France since 1994 when French police caught him in Sudan after two decades on the run

Carlos, now 71, is serving separate life sentences over the 1975 murders of two French policemen and a police informer, and for bombings in Paris and Marseille in 1982 and 1983, which killed 11 people and wounded dozens.

Updated: September 23, 2021, 9:32 PM