Jackal's lawyer for 'attacker'

2001-12-12 21:08

Paris - The lawyer for the Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, said on Wednesday she would be counsel to Zacarias Moussaoui, the first person indicted in the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Isabelle Coutant-Peyre said Moussaoui's mother, Aicha Moussaoui, contacted her at the end of November and that she would demand that the French government repatriate her client to be tried in France.

"If he can be sentenced to death for conspiracy, I consider it impossible that France would allow him to be tried in the United States," she said.

On Tuesday, Moussaoui was indicted on six counts of conspiracy in the September 11 bombings that killed some 3 300 people.

Four of the counts carry the death penalty, which France outlawed in 1981.

"Under these conditions," Coutant-Peyre said, "the only acceptable hypothesis is a French trial for him as a French citizen".

Earlier on Wednesday, the French foreign ministry said that Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan origins, had rejected French consular protection.

Carlos "the Jackal" is serving a life sentence in France after being convicted in 1997 of a triple murder. - Sapa-DPA

- SAPA