Carlos the Jackal convicted over 1974 Paris bombing

By Hajer

PARIS

Self-styled professional revolutionary Ilich Ramirez Sanchez -- better known as Carlos the Jackal -- was given a third life sentence by a Paris court on Tuesday for a deadly grenade attack 43 years ago in the French capital.

The trial -- which began on March.13 -- was heard by three judges without a jury under counter-terrorism laws.

Sanchez, who has spent the last 23 years in a high-security prison, was accused of throwing a grenade into the Drugstore Publicis in Paris on 15 Sept 1974, killing two men and wounding 34 people.

The 67-year-old Venezuelan had denied carrying out the attack but prosecutors said he was identified as the assailant in a 1979 newspaper interview. Sanchez has said the interview was fabricated.

Sanchez, who carried out a wave of attacks in the 1970s and 1980s on behalf of the Palestinian cause, was arrested in Sudan in 1994 for the murders of two French policemen in 1975 and his role in bomb attacks that killed 11 people in Paris and Marseille in the early 1980s.

Prosecutor Remi Crosson du Cormier had told the court on Monday that "all evidence gathered in this investigation points to Carlos" while admitting that investigators had found no DNA evidence.

Carlos's lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre described the court process as "obviously a political trial" and "paleontology," arguing the decades-long lapse of time since the 1974 attack had decreased the reliability of eyewitness testimony.

"I am no innocent, but this trial is an absurdity from every point of view," Carlos said in his final statement as he blew kisses to his supporters.

By Hajer

PARIS

The trial -- which began on March.13 -- was heard by three judges without a jury under counter-terrorism laws.

Sanchez, who has spent the last 23 years in a high-security prison, was accused of throwing a grenade into the Drugstore Publicis in Paris on 15 Sept 1974, killing two men and wounding 34 people.

The 67-year-old Venezuelan had denied carrying out the attack but prosecutors said he was identified as the assailant in a 1979 newspaper interview. Sanchez has said the interview was fabricated.

Prosecutor Remi Crosson du Cormier had told the court on Monday that "all evidence gathered in this investigation points to Carlos" while admitting that investigators had found no DNA evidence.

"I am no innocent, but this trial is an absurdity from every point of view," Carlos said in his final statement as he blew kisses to his supporters.