` the Jackal' Trial Begins In Paris After Years of Mayhem `Professional Revolutionary' Addresses Court 471 131 617 By Charles Tr u ehear t He is being fried, however, on just Washington Post Foreign Service three charges of murder in a June 1975 shooting in Paris that left two French PARIS, Dec. 12—"Carlos the Jackal" police officers and a Lebanese inform- finally went on trial today, nearly a er dead. Carlos claims he had nothing quarter of a century after his name became synonymous with world ter- to do with the killings; he has said he rorism. believes that Israeli intelligence was "My name is Mich Ramirez San- responsible and that the attack was chez," said the ascot-wearing retired designed to sour relations between Venezuelan guerrilla and arms traffick- France and the Palestinians, whose er as he stood in a Paris courtroom. burgeoning cause he adopted in the "My profession is professional revolu- early 1970s. tionary!" But Carlos the Jackal became world- Ramirez, 48, who appeared relaxed famous—the grainy, grim face of fiend- and smiling amid the heavy security of ish terror on magazine covers and the Palace of Justice, has been charged television screens—six months after in the killing of at least 16 people and the injuries of hundreds more in bomb- the Paris shooting. ing attacks and other armed terrorist Storming a conference hall in Vien- hits from the mid-1970s to the early na, he and a band of confederates 1980s. He once claimed to have killed captured 11 oil ministers from the 83 people. See CARLOS, A15, Col. 1

.:Ntlie presiding judge, Yves Lorneloup, CARLOS, From Al kO,disqualify a civil party to the case, an writanti •-terror organization called SOS-At- , then-potent Organization of Petroleum tentats, which he described as "ex- Exporting Countries. „ttpmist, revisionist and racist.” The The ministers later were released in ,i..,jtidge said he would rule later. , reportedly for a ransom hand- r j ;1;The trial is expected to last about a l:: .SOme enough to have underwritten his week before going to a combination ':inOb's future revolutionary projects ,4udge and jury panel for a verdict.

and kept Carlos himself in the Cuban • cigars and Savile Row tailoring he has 1-• , preferred since his London youth as a i-.,.., iniember of a prosperous Venezuelan Carlos's trail of death and mayhem continued long after the incidents of ;:'„On the stand in public for the first 1975. Bombings on trains and in the time today, the reputedly multilingual Carlos, speaking French heavily ac- streets of Pans, Berlin and Marseille cented by Spanish, described his ad- made him the world's most wanted dress like this: "The world is my terrorist. He moved audaciously—two '',.;t1Ornain. My last address was Khar- bazooka attacks on jetliners at Orly N: tour, in Sudan." Airport in Paris on successive Sun- The reference was to his August days, for example, were both failures. f994 abduction in after his As exotic as he was fiendish, he turned :Sudanese hosts found him too difficult up in and Yugoslavia, maintain and protect. Seized by and . :French agents from a hospital operat- ', ing table—by some accounts, he was His father, who is still living, was a injected with an incapacitating drug prominent communist lawyer in Cara- and stuffed in a sack—the arrest was a cas. He named his sons Vladimir, filch humbling moment for the long-elusive and Lenin. Illich, later Carlos, studied I guerrilla. Carlos has been in solitary at Patrice Lumumba University in confinement, preparing his defense, Moscow before being asked to leave - ever since. the Soviet Union in 1970, apparently ,:.'France sentenced Carlos in absentia for the capitalist habits he brought to to life imprisonment in 1992, and he is his revolutionary fervor. exercising his right to a retrial in Carlos's terror business faded with person—even as he declares that the the times, and by the early 1980s he French system of justice is part of an was close to being a full-time arms American-Zionist conspiracy. merchant He wound up in Khartoum, the stand today, he denounced seemingly under the protection of the the "monstrous arbitrariness" of the radical Sudanese government trial, the first in a series he faces. "I His life there followed a familiar can't be judged because of the condi- pattern of excess. He was known for tions of my arrest." pouring expensive whiskey in expatri- According to his lawyer. Isabelle ate clubs of the capital of a country 1Coutant-Peyre, Carlos will argue in his whose laws proscribed alcohol. He had "own defense that the circumstances of a new name, a new Jordanian wife and his forced extraction from Sudan vio- an unchecked habit of chasing women. ' lated his rights under the European And until his arrest in 1994, ac- Charter of Human Rights. cording to a French magazine ac- count, few of his acquaintances in ... .Referring to Carlos's "kidnapping," He had contacts with then-proliferat- 'she said: "Carlos is a convinced revolu- Khartoum had any idea who he was. tionary. He has dedicated his life to the ing guerrilla movements and terror Carlos's behavior as one of the cause. I do not accept the use of the cells across western and eastern Eu- world's most notorious political pris- term 'terrorist' " rope, Latin America and the Middle oners has been an entertaining final .,,One of many anonymous, inside-the- East His adopted cause was the libera- act in the Carlos drama. Anvestigation sources quoted in French tion of Palestine, and his initial associa- In his cell, according to his law- newspapers summed up the faintly tions were with the Popular Front for yers' testimony, Carlos has con- I condescending treatment the once- the liberation of Palestine, a radical sumed dozens of foreign news publi- - 'feared Carlos is now getting: wing of Yasser Arafat's Palestine liber- cations every day and feverishly "He knows he's a has-been. His ation Organization. But Carlos was a prepared his elaborate defense. • mental universe is the Palestinian freelancer, a contract hire, who came He has met frequently since 1994 guerrilla movement. He's nothing but by his radicalism at home. with the investigating magistrate in a dinosaur of the Cold War stranded in the '90s." Carlos's first move today was to ask BY JEAN CU1UDE BAUER-ASSOCIATED PRESS A sketch shows 'Jackal' Illich Ramirez Sanchez In the Paris courtroom.

his case, Jean-Louis Bruguiere. For known prosecutor. Bruguiere, often the French. the trial represents a dubbed "the Cowboy," supervises showdown between a notorious virtually all of France's crusades criminal and the country's best against terrorists.

A TERRORIST'S CAREER French police charge Carlos killed • Bombing of main Marseille railroad terminal on the Paris-Marseille express in two French intelligence agents and a "Carlos the Jackal" has acknowledged his role some of the bloodiest terrorist kills five people and wounds 50. attacks of the 1970s; police and intelligence sources have linked him to other Lebanese man who were investigating attacks on planes of Israel's • Bombing of French cultural center in attacks. airlines at Paris's Orly Airport. West Berlin kills one and wounds 23.

Born Illich Ramirez Sanchez Linked to: Other terror attacks in 1982 and in Venezuela to a • Takeover of the Said to have been the brain 1983 to which Carlos has been Begins study at French Embassy in behind hijacking of an Air wealthy linked: Arrested in Sudan Patrice Lumumba The Hague, France jetliner to Entebbe, and taken to communist ■ Bombing of Paris-Toulouse lawyer who gave University in Netherlands. Uganda. Israeli commandos France, where he express train kills six people and his son Lenin's Moscow, famous • Bombing of Paris storm the plane and end the has been in Guerrilla guarding Israeli hostages. wounds 15, middle name. training ground for drugstore in which standoff; 31 people die. solitary • Bombing near Champs Elysees future terrorists and two people died confinement in Intelligence reports link him to in Paris kills a pregnant woman KGB recruits. and 30 were maximum the massacre of 11 Israeli and wounds 63 other people. security athletes at the Olympics. wounded. jail.

9.

Convicted in Joins Communist Carlos and band of Palestinian absentia by French Students Movement and West German guerrillas court for 1975 in Venezuela. attack ministerial meeting in killing of two Receives guerrilla Joins Popular Front for the Vienna of the Organization of Oil French training in Cuba. Liberation of Palestine. Begins Exporting Countries, in which counterintelligence terrorist career. The media later three people die. Eleven cartel agents. nicknames him after the fictional oil ministers taken to North Africa terrorist in 's 1971 in a hijacked plane in a $1 billion SOURCES: News wires, novel, The Day of the Jackal." staff reports ransom drama. Austrian guards outside OPEC meeting.

TH( WASHNGTON POS