Defiant Carlos the Jackal on trial for 11 terrorist killings in 1980s

The 62-year-old Venezuelan, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, went before a special Paris court on terrorism charges. He is already serving a life sentence for the murders in 1975 of two French secret agents and an alleged informer.

Ramirez was one of the most feared terrorist masterminds. He is charged with instigating four attacks in 1982 and 1983 that killed 11 people and injured more than 140 others. He denies the charges.

Ramirez smiled as he entered and then identified himself to the court as “a professional revolutionary”. He raised a fist in defiance, weaved anti-Zionist rhetoric into his diatribes and smiled back to someone in the chamber.

“He’s in a fighting mood as always,” Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, Ramirez’s lawyer and partner, said outside the court. She said there was “no reason” for the trial nearly 30 years after the events, and accused French prosecutors of putting him on trial for “propaganda”.

The case centres on four bombings – two against French trains, another at a Paris office of an Arabic-language newspaper and yet another at a French cultural centre in Berlin.

The trial continues.