Thursday, January 28, 2010
Carlos the Jackal
Film directors aren’t the only ones who insist on final cut. From his prison cell, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, a.k.a. Carlos the Jackal, is suing a French film company making a documentary about the terrorist who was the most famous of his kind back in the 1970s and 1980s. Sánchez claims the film’s producers plan to blame him for incidents he was not convicted of, thus tarnishing his image. Through his attorney and wife, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, Sánchez insists he be given a final copy of the documentary before it is released and allowed time to make his own edits.
Sánchez is serving life in prison in France for killing two French internal security agents and their informant in 1975. That same year, he took 11 OPEC oil ministers and dozens others hostage in Vienna. He also was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical group that helped pioneer airline hijackings.
In August 1994, Sánchez checked into Ibn Khalmud hospital in Sudan for minor surgery relating to a low sperm count. While he was recovering, security personnel informed Sánchez and his wife that his life was in danger and he had to be transferred to a military hospital. From there he was moved to a private villa and then, in the middle of the night, he was snatched by French agents and flown to Paris, where he was tried for the murder of the French policemen, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
Carlos the Jackal, Imprisoned for Life, Looks in Lawsuit to Protect His Image (by Edward Cody, Washington Post)
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