Carlos the Jackal goes hungry

2004-05-05 20:16

Paris - Carlos the Jackal, the convicted Venezuelan terrorist serving a life sentence in a Paris jail, on Wednesday told prison authorities that he had launched a hunger strike to protest disciplinary measures.

In a letter to the administrators of the Fresnes prison outside Paris, Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, said he was protesting a decision to place him in a disciplinary cell after he refused to go to another cell in solitary confinement "filled with unspeakable things", his lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre said in a statement.

Prison officials countered that the proposed cell was "perfectly clean". Carlos, 54, is due to appear before a disciplinary committee on Thursday.

Coutant-Peyre also charged that her client - who is also her husband - has been "deprived of medical treatment to control his type 2 diabetes, which arose as a result of prison conditions."

Carlos was convicted to life in prison in 1997 for a triple murder committed in the French capital in 1975, but he faces fresh trials for other crimes that are being investigated.

In prison, he has remained defiant. In March, he gave an interview to a French television station by telephone in which he stated "there are no innocent victims" and refused to ask for forgiveness for his crimes.

The former Marxist-Leninist radical mastermind boasted that his operations in the 1970s and 1980s killed more than 1 500 people.

Last week he turned up to a hearing in his underwear - in protest at an order to take off his belt, he had removed his trousers and arrived in court in a shirt, underpants and black socks.

Anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere was questioning him about his role in a 1982 car bomb explosion in front of an Arabic newspaper's office in Paris that killed a 30-year-old pregnant woman and wounded 59 people.

- AFP