Drugstore attack in 1974: Carlos sentenced to life again in his final trial

This time will be the last. It was at the end of his final appearance before French justice that Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, said Carlos, 71, was again sentenced Thursday, September 23 in Paris to life imprisonment for the murderous attack on the Drugstore Publicis in 1974, which killed 2 people and injured 34 others.

After more than two hours of deliberation, the special assize court, which only ruled on the length of the sentence, thus confirmed the sentence to life imprisonment, already pronounced twice against Carlos in this report. forty-seven year old file.

” Thank you so much “, replied from the box, in a neutral voice, this figure of terrorism “Anti-imperialist” 1970s-1980s. Before the court retired to deliberate, he had said to himself “Proud of his revolutionary journey”, delighting to reaffirm that he had “Killed 83 people, at least”, but reluctant to explain the Drugstore affair, a “Rude handling” according to him.

“This positioning, despite his age and many years in detention”, convinced the court to sentence Carlos to the maximum penalty, in order to ” to preserve “ any risk of repetition, motivated the professional magistrates. The court followed the requisitions of the attorney general, Rémi Crosson du Cormier, who had demanded the “Supreme sanction”, at the height of the “Seriousness of the facts”.

Two more life sentences

Carlos was sentenced in March 2017 to life imprisonment for having thrown a grenade in the shopping arcade of the Parisian department store, a sentence confirmed a year later on appeal. While maintaining the guilty verdict of the “Jackal” in the attack, the Court of Cassation ordered a third trial in November 2019, dealing only with the quantum of the sentence.

Carlos’s lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, denounced the absurdity of this “Mock trial”, also protesting against the “Unreasonable delay” of the procedure. ” I [lui] advised not “ appeal in cassation, reacted M^e Coutant-Peyre, after deliberation. “It is up to Venezuela to make a request to the French State for his transfer”, she considered.

Imprisoned in France since his arrest in Sudan in 1994, Carlos is serving two other life sentences, for a triple murder in 1975 in Paris and for four bombings committed in France in 1982 and 1983 (11 dead and 191 injured ).

The judgment of the Assize Court “Will be historic only in the sense that it will put an end to the long legal course of the one who has been imprisoned for twenty-six years”, estimated the Advocate General.

“Unacceptable”

White hair and mustache, neck scarf and pocket slipped into his jacket, apparent watch on the wrist, Carlos treated his last appearance before an assize court. But the “Professional revolutionary” aging has only performed in front of a handful of supporters, to whom he glances, kisses and raised fist.

The one who sometimes indulged in long monologues in the courtrooms spoke last, as is customary, for only thirteen minutes, vilifying a file “Prescribed, without witness”.

During the two days of the hearing, he showed himself sometimes smiling, sometimes exasperated by the search of his personal effects or the ” flight [ses] pens’, judging him “Unacceptable”. “Before, there was order and respect”, he got carried away.

The attack on the Drugstore Publicis, located at the corner of Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rue de Rennes in Paris, took place on September 15, 1974, around 5:10 p.m.: a grenade thrown by a man from the mezzanine restaurant of the store had exploded in the shopping arcade below.

Without DNA or confession, justice validated the thesis of the prosecution, according to which this attack aimed to facilitate the release of a Japanese arrested in Orly, a member of the Japanese Red Army, whose commando also came from demand release in the event of a hostage-taking at the French Embassy in The Hague.

This movement was close to a branch of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), of which Carlos had become one of the armed groups in Europe. Carlos had been convicted on the basis of a body of evidence, including the testimony of a former comrade in arms repented, Hans-Joachim Klein, but also the reconciliation of the grenade used at the Drugstore with those abandoned after the capture of ‘hostages of The Hague.