Carlos the Jackal fined in jail

2006-04-04 16:51

Paris - Imprisoned terrorist mastermind Carlos the Jackal was fined €5 000 euros (about R37 000) by a French court on Tuesday for justifying terrorism in an interview given from his prison cell.

In a telephone interview with France's M6 television, broadcast in 2004, Carlos, whose real name is Illich Ramirez Sanchez, argued that his past activities were justified and that there were no innocent victims of terrorism.

"By describing deadly terrorist operations as 'legitimate war'... he commits the crime of justifying terrorism," said the court ruling.

In the same interview, the Venezuelan-born Carlos, 56, had voiced satisfaction with the September 11 2001 attacks in the United States and allegedly laughed that "the Great Satan got it up the arse".

The court ruling did not refer to his remarks about the 2001 attacks, which his lawyer said had been taken out of context. <5>

Caught before liposuction op

Prosecutors had been seeking a €20 000 fine.

Carlos, who was at the Paris court for the hearing, is serving a life sentence in a French jail after being convicted in 1997 for a triple murder committed in 1975.

He was captured by French intelligence services in Sudan in 1994, while sedated for a liposuction operation.

The Marxist-Leninist radical, who staged the spectacular 1975 kidnapping of international oil ministers meeting in Vienna, once boasted that his plots had killed more than 1 500 people in two decades.

- AFP