Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as "Carlos the Jackal," goes on trial in France for the 1974 terror bombing of a Paris shop that killed two people and injured 34.

Three judges on March 13 will hear the trial of Carlos for the September 15, 1974, grenade attack on a drugstore in Paris's Saint-Germain-des-Pres section.

The Venezuelan, now 67 years old, was named "Carlos the Jackal" by the press after a fictional terrorist in the 1971 Frederick Forsyth novel, The Day of the Jackal.

He is currently serving a life sentence for the murders of two policemen in Paris in 1975 and that of a Lebanese revolutionary.

He was also convicted of four bombings in Paris and Marseille in 1982 and 1983, which killed 11 people and injured nearly 150.

Besides these convictions, Carlos is also suspected of involvement in the hijacking of a French airliner in 1976 and the 1981 bombing of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty headquarters in Munich, in which five people were injured.

He was arrested in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1994 by elite French police.

"The victims have been waiting so long for Carlos to be judged and convicted. Their wounds have never healed," said lawyer Georges Holleaux, who is representing the two widows of the men killed in the Paris bombing and 16 others.

Carlos denies the charges.

Based on reporting by AFP

