France tries Carlos the Jackal over 1974 store bombing

By Hajer M’tiri

PARIS

Self-styled professional revolutionary Ilich Ramirez Sanchez -- better known as Carlos the Jackal – faced judges on Monday to be tried for a grenade attack 43 years ago.

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

The 67-year-old Venezuelan denies 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.

“The victims have been waiting so long for Carlos to be judged and convicted,” Georges Holleaux, a lawyer representing grenade attack victims and their families, said. “Their wounds have never healed.”

The case is being heard by three judges without a jury under counter-terrorism laws.

If convicted of the murders, Sanchez faces a third life sentence. A verdict is expected on March 31.