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A French court has sentenced a Venezuelan militant to life in prison for a series of deadly bomb attacks in France nearly 30 years ago. Late Thursday, a court in Paris convicted “Carlos the Jackal”, on four separate bombings that killed eleven people and wounded nearly 150 others.
The judge said the 62-year old, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, must serve at least 18 years of the life sentence. Sanchez has been serving another life sentence in France for the past 20 years on an unrelated murder conviction. Authorities say Sanchez masterminded the terrorist bombings on two trains, a train station and on a Paris street during 1982 and 1983.
Officials say two of the attacks were designed to persuade French authorities to free two of his associates and his girlfriend. The court acquitted Sanchez's girlfriend. His two co-conspirators, who were not in court during the trial, were convicted and sentenced to life terms.
Tweet
A French court has sentenced a Venezuelan militant to life in prison for a series of deadly bomb attacks in France nearly 30 years ago. Late Thursday, a court in Paris convicted “Carlos the Jackal”, on four separate bombings that killed eleven people and wounded nearly 150 others.
The judge said the 62-year old, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, must serve at least 18 years of the life sentence. Sanchez has been serving another life sentence in France for the past 20 years on an unrelated murder conviction. Authorities say Sanchez masterminded the terrorist bombings on two trains, a train station and on a Paris street during 1982 and 1983.
Officials say two of the attacks were designed to persuade French authorities to free two of his associates and his girlfriend. The court acquitted Sanchez's girlfriend. His two co-conspirators, who were not in court during the trial, were convicted and sentenced to life terms.
‘Carlos the Jackal’ guilty of 1980s bombings
The notorious Marxist revolutionary known as “Carlos the Jackal” has been convicted in France of a series of deadly 1980s bombings and given a second life sentence, the Associated Press reports.
Venezuela-born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, 62, has been serving a life sentence in a French prison since being captured in 1994 for the 1975 murders of two French counterintelligence agents. In the 1970s, he was affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
He was found guilty today of four French attacks that killed 11 and wounded 140.
Before the verdict, he delivered a five-hour monologue, which Reuters describes as “alternately rambling, vitriolic and poignant.”
“I am in prison … condemned in a pre-decided case,” he told the court, his voice rising. “I am a living martyr.”
He said dying in prison “is the role of a revolutionary.”
His life was dramatized in a six-hour movie/miniseries last year.
