Europe

Europe

Carlos the Jackal sentenced to life prison

16 December 2011 08:54 (UTC +04:00)

He was handed the maximum sentence that had been requested by French prosecutors who had urged the court to find 62-year-old guilty of the bombings that killed 11 people and left nearly 150 injured. The lawyers can appeal the court decision only 18 years later.
The trial centres on four bombings: Two against French trains, another at a Paris office of an Arabic-language newspaper and yet another at a French cultural centre in then-West Berlin. Ramirez is serving a life sentence for the 1975 murders of two French secret agents and an alleged informer. He was also the chief suspect in the 1975 hostage-taking of OPEC oil ministers that left three people dead.
Ramirez allegedly took hijackings, bombings and killings in mercenary style, with links for years to causes like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and in far-left European terror groups.
Shadowy alliances that thrived during the Cold War kept him beyond the reach of Western secret services. But after the fall of Communism, French operatives nabbed him in 1994 in Khartoum, Sudan, and flew him to Paris.
He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison three years later.