LITMIR.BIZ

      Tuesday, 23 December 1997

SENTENCED TO LIFE

      To the end, the real Ilich Ramirez Sanchez never quite stood up.

      Over the eight days of his trial, the former global Public Enemy Number One put on a series of masks: the committed "professional revolutionary"; the urbane socialite; the educated man of the world; the lawyer manque; the admirer and friend of France; the self-pitying victim of imperialist conspiracy; the gallant lady's man; the bigoted anti-Semite.

      Even after hearing the verdict he merely smiled, shook his fist in the air four times and said "Viva la revolucion" before walking out of the courtroom escorted by police guards.

      The nine-member jury had taken four hours before convicting him of shooting Raymond Dous, Jean Donatini and Michel Moukharbal, a Lebanese colleague of Carlos in a student apartment near the Sorbonne.

      But Ramirez had given a brief glimpse of all of the faces of Carlos in his final oration yesterday, a four-hour ramble, covering everything from Lenin to General Noriega and the global war against "McDonald'sisation". The portly, sprucely dressed 48-year-old man blamed for many of the most audacious, and callous, terrorist acts of the Seventies and Eighties did not get around to the staggering revelations about his dealings with Western governments that he had promised.

      In the end, the observer was left with the impression that manipulation for its own sake was all that Carlos had left; or maybe that was all that there had ever been.

      Much of the speech was spoken so softly that it was inaudible. He paid tribute to the "Palestinian people" to whom he had devoted his life. He urged the world to join them in a "war, a global war, a war to the death, the war which humanity must win against McDonald'sisation". He paid tribute to his leading lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, "the daughter of an old French family, a daughter of the true France". If that made him sound like a Vichy-sympathiser or a fascist, "so be it", he said.

      The crime of which he was accused - the murder of the two French secret service agents and a Lebanese informer in June 1975 - was an "ambush", he said. It was all got up by the state of Israel, the "first terrorist state in history". Besides, it was not him; he was not even present. Later, however, he said: "I have never denied the facts, I confirm or deny nothing. The truth is formed like a puzzle ... You must show the world that it is all a masquerade ... One day someone will speak."

      Earlier, this defence - which flew in the face of all the evidence and Carlos's own previous admissions in the Arab press - was scornfully dismissed by a lawyer for the victims. Maitre Francis Szpiner said it was below the dignity of the great international revolutionary that Carlos purported to be to make such a defence. "You say you're not just a chicken stealer but you defend yourself like a chicken stealer, not like a revolutionary."

      Olivier Maudret, a lawyer appointed to defend Carlos when Ms Coutant- Peyre made a brief, choreographed withdrawal last week, said that the jury and judges could afford to acquit Carlos because he still faced five other serious charges in France.

      They should throw out the case because it had been "torpedoed by the DST to cover-up a state scandal". Carlos was being tried on the "rotten basis of an aborted argument".

      After the verdict, Ms Coutant-Peyre said the defence would appeal.

      "It was not a just trial. He was convicted on political grounds," she said. "I consider that the decision comes from outside interests, especially America and Israel."

      John Lichfield

      Tuesday, 17 October2000

MEETING CARLOS FOR ONE LAST TIME

      Twenty-five years after his crime, the German urban guerrilla Hans-Joachim Klein stood in a Frankfurt courtroom yesterday, accusing his former commander, "Carlos the Jackal", of lying, and implicating Libya in state terrorism.

      It is Mr Klein, though, who is in the dock, charged with complicity in the murders of three people during the infamous attack on an Opec meeting in Vienna in December 1975. He can hardly deny being there, since he was himself shot in the stomach in Vienna, but claims to have fired at no one.

      The prosecution, however, has a witness up its sleeve, who is expected to testify that Mr Klein did pull the fatal trigger. The name of the witness is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez - Carlos the Jackal himself. The two former colleagues, now mortal enemies, are scheduled to confront each other on 23 November, either in Frankfurt, if the French authorities will allow, or in Paris, where Carlos is serving his long jail sentence.

      The other actors of the drama will try to keep a lower profile. For this trial comes at an inconvenient time for several people in high places, and not just for the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the former czar of state terrorism who has lately been working hard to have himself rehabilitated in the Western world.

      "My friend Joschka Fischer," received a fond mention in Mr Klein's testimony yesterday, as did Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the French MEP and former revolutionary leader known in his youthful days as Danny the Red. When the two worlds - urban terrorism and anarchic but legal parliamentary politics - parted in the late 70s, Mr Klein was stranded in the middle. He now represents the missing link between those that ended up shot or in jail - such as Carlos - or successfully cleansed their murky past and climbed the greasy pole of politics.

      Now the trial brings it all back, much to the dismay of Germany's Foreign Minister.

      The country's current political masters can be excused for striving to focus exclusively on the events in Vienna. "We are not concerned with the roles of people who are still politically active today," the Presiding Judge, Heinrich Gehrke, declared at the outset.

      But Mr Klein was keen to illuminate the road that led him to Vienna three days before Christmas Eve 1975.

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