Venezuela-born Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, best known as Carlos the Jackal, was blowing kisses to his Paris audience in court yesterday
In an often rambling statement in the Paris court on Monday, the 67-year-old said that any murders he had committed were carried out in the name of “the revolution”.
“No-one has executed more people than me in the Palestinian resistance,” he said, “[and] I am the only survivor. In all the fighting, there were collateral victims, it’s unfortunate,” he said.
Wearing a jacket with a red pocket handkerchief, Ramirez smiled and blew kisses upon first appearing in the dock before kissing the hand of his lawyer and long-term partner, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre.
He then embarked on a diatribe in which he condemned wealthy “Zionist interests” who he said were eager to crush anybody who stood up to Israeli aggression.
He said that lawyers prosecuting him for the shopping centre attack in Paris 43 years ago were “scavengers” for forcing him back to court.
You may recall that Carlos the Jackal, when sentenced to life in jail for the 1975 murders of two French secret agents and a Lebanese informant, earned the high praise of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez, who called him “a brother.”
UPDATE
Linked to by Silvio Canto. Thank you!
He said that lawyers prosecuting him for the shopping centre attack in Paris 43 years ago were “scavengers” for forcing him back to court.
Why couldn’t he have called those lawyers “jackals?” After all jackals ARE scavengers 🙂
When I was working in Venezuela, I was impressed, not in a positive way, at meeting a number of people whose leftist parents had given them names like “Illich” that were related to Communist icons.
Peru’s VP and Correa’s heir-in-the-making is named Lenin.