France hears Jackal’s appeal

In 2011, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known in the press as "Carlos the Jackal," received a second life sentence for the 1982-83 bomb attacks on trains, a station in Marseille and a magazine in Paris. The attacks left 11 dead and 140 injured. His first life sentence conviction came in 1997 for a 1975 triple murder.

For his appeal, the defense claims that files from East Germany's Stasi police, used as evidence, have proven fundamentally unreliable.

The 63-year-old Venezuelan national claimed involvement in attacks that killed hundreds, calling himself a "professional revolutionary" for various causes. However, he denies involvement in the 1982-83 attacks.

Officials believe the 1982-83 bombings came in retaliation for France's detention of two members of a militant group Carlos led with Stasi support. Prosecutors struggled to secure the evidence needed for his conviction until the release of secret Stasi files in the years that followed the collapse of communism and German reunification.

At stake

Carlos hopes to secure transfer to Venezuela - improbable, given the outrage that would trigger in France. Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez described Carlos as a revolutionary wrongly convicted. Defense attorney Isabelle Coutant-Peyre says Venezuela should press for his repatriation, alleging that Sudan illegally detained him in 1994.

Carlos was the world's most wanted fugitive until authorities finally arrested him in Sudan in 1994 and transferred him to France, where a court convicted him in 1997 for the 1975 murder in Paris of an alleged informant and two agents of the security services. Carlos also remains under investigation for the 1974 bombing of the Drugstore Saint-Germain in Paris, which killed two people and injured 34.

Judges will also review the acquittal of Christa Fröhlich, and alleged accomplice in the 1982-83 attacks. The court had also tried the German, now 70, in 2011. Fröhlich has reportedly told the court that she will not attend the appeal, scheduled to run through June.

mkg/hc (AFP, dpa)