SHARE
COPY LINK

COURT

Jackal trial begins in Paris amid confusion

The high-profile appeal hearing of Carlos the Jackal got underway in a French court on Monday amid confusion after he asked his defence lawyers to stay away from court. Carlos is appealing against his conviction for a series of bombings 30 years ago.

Jackal trial begins in Paris amid confusion
A court sketch made on November 8, 2011 in Paris, shows Venezuelan militant cell leader Carlos the Jackal (C) at Paris courthouse during his trial. Photo: Benoit Peyrucq/AFP

Carlos the Jackal, once considered one of the world's most wanted terrorists, returned to court in Paris on Monday to appeal his conviction for a series of deadly bombings in France 30 years ago.

The trial kicked off with Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, appearing without his defence lawyers and saying he had asked them not to attend.

The 63-year-old, who has been imprisoned in France since his capture in Sudan in 1994, was found guilty in 2011 of masterminding the 1982 and 1983 attacks on two French passenger trains, a train station in Marseille and a Libyan magazine office in Paris.

Already serving life for murder at the time, Carlos was given another life sentence for his role in attacks that left 11 people dead and nearly 150 injured, earning him the mantle of the world's most wanted fugitive.

The 1982-83 bombings in France were widely believed to have been carried out to avenge France's detention of two fellow members of a militant group Carlos ran with the support of East Germany's notorious secret police, the Stasi.

Prosecutors in France had struggled to secure a conviction until the release of secret Stasi files in the years that followed the collapse of Communism and German reunification.

At the heart of Carlos's appeal will be a claim that the evidence garnered from these files is fundamentally unreliable.

"I have forbidden my lawyers from coming to defend me," Carlos told the court as the trial began, saying he had asked them not to attend because Venezuelan authorities would not agree to cover his court costs.

"I have nothing against the court… I have no intention of sabotaging the trial," he said, asking for court-appointed defence lawyers.

But he earned a quick reprimand from the judge when two young lawyers entered the courtroom to defend him, saying "A blonde and a brunette?"

The panel of judges that will hear the appeal will also review the acquittal of Christa Froehlich, a 70-year-old German, of charges of involvement in one of the attacks.

Froehlich was tried in absentia in 2011 and has informed the court she will not be attending the appeal, which is scheduled to run until the end of June.

At his first trial, Carlos denied any involvement in the 1982-83 bombings while issuing a series of ambiguous pronouncements about his role as a "professional revolutionary" waging a war for the liberation of Palestine and other causes.

In numerous interviews he has given over the years, he has claimed responsibility for or involvement in dozens of attacks in which hundreds of people have died.

After years on the run from Western security services, he was finally arrested in Sudan in 1994 and transferred to France, where he was convicted three years later of the 1975 murder in Paris of two members of the French security services and an alleged informer.

He could yet face a third trial in France as an examining magistrate is still investigating a 1974 bombing in the centre of Paris that left two people dead and 34 injured.

Venezuela's late leader Hugo Chavez was a strong supporter of Carlos, describing him as a revolutionary who had been wrongly convicted.

Carlos has spent several years in solitary confinement but his prison conditions in France have, of late, been much more comfortable.

At the Centrale de Poissy in the western suburbs of Paris, he spends his time reading, taking philosophy and literature classes and talking with his many visitors, according to one of his lawyers, Francis Vuillemin.

"It is similar to the life of a monk in an abbey," Vuillemin said.

According to Aude Simeon, a former teacher in the prison, the monk's life also includes access to cigars and Venezuelan coffee served in his cell.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

COURT

French court orders Twitter to reveal anti-hate speech efforts

A French court has ordered Twitter to give activists full access to all its documents relating to efforts to combat racism, sexism and other forms of hate speech on the social network.

French court orders Twitter to reveal anti-hate speech efforts
Photo: Alastair Pike | AFP

Six anti-discrimination groups had taken Twitter to court in France last year, accusing the US social media giant of “long-term and persistent” failures in blocking hateful comments from the site.

The Paris court ordered Twitter to grant the campaign groups full access to all documents relating to the company’s efforts to combat hate speech since May 2020. The ruling applies to Twitter’s global operation, not just France.

Twitter must hand over “all administrative, contractual, technical or commercial documents” detailing the resources it has assigned to fighting homophobic, racist and sexist discourse on the site, as well as “condoning crimes against humanity”.

The San Francisco-based company was given two months to comply with the ruling, which also said it must reveal how many moderators it employs in France to examine posts flagged as hateful, and data on the posts they process.

The ruling was welcomed by the Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF), one of the groups that had taken the social media giant to court.

“Twitter will finally have to take responsibility, stop equivocating and put ethics before profit and international expansion,” the UEJF said in a statement on its website.

Twitter’s hateful conduct policy bans users from promoting violence, or threatening or attacking people based on their race, religion, gender identity or disability, among other forms of discrimination.

Like other social media businesses it allows users to report posts they believe are hateful, and employs moderators to vet the content.

But anti-discrimination groups have long complained that holes in the policy allow hateful comments to stay online in many cases.

French prosecutors on Tuesday said they have opened an investigation into a wave of racist comments posted on Twitter aimed at members of the country’s national football team.

The comments, notably targeting Paris Saint-Germain star Kylian Mbappe, were posted after France was eliminated from the Euro 2020 tournament last week.

France has also been having a wider public debate over how to balance the right to free speech with preventing hate speech, in the wake of the controversial case of a teenager known as Mila.

The 18-year-old sparked a furore last year when her videos, criticising Islam in vulgar terms, went viral on social media.

Thirteen people are on trial accused of subjecting her to such vicious harassment that she was forced to leave school and was placed under police protection.

While President Emmanuel Macron is among those who have defended her right to blaspheme, left-wing critics say her original remarks amounted to hate speech against Muslims.

SHOW COMMENTS