Terrorist "Carlos the Jackal" has been jailed for life for a third time over a deadly 1974 attack on a Paris shopping centre.

Five judges found Venezuelan-born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez guilty of throwing a grenade into an arcade, killing two people and injuring 32.

He is already serving two life sentences in France for murders and attacks carried out on behalf of the Palestinian cause or of communist revolution in the 1970s and 80s.

As Tuesday's hearing drew to a close, the 67-year-old known worldwide as "Carlos" denounced "an absurd trial" for a 42-year-old crime.

Carlos had denied involvement, saying there was no proof against him.


The white-haired defendant, wearing a black shirt and jacket with a trademark kerchief in the breast pocket, blew kisses at supporters before taking the stand.

Image: Carlos The Jackal, pictured in 2013, denied the shop attack

Prosecutor Remi Crosson du Cormier had told the court in Paris on Monday that "all evidence gathered in this investigation points to Carlos" - but admitted investigators had found no DNA, fingerprints or CCTV evidence.

Lawyers for Carlos - who has been in prison since he was arrested in Sudanese capital Khartoum in 1994 - branded the two-week trial "judicial palaeontology".

At the start of the trial, Carlos had boasted: "No one in the Palestinian resistance has executed more people than I have."

He claimed to be responsible for 80 deaths but denied involvement in the Drugstore Publicis attack in the upmarket Left Bank Saint-Germain district.

Image: The aftermath of the Drugstore Publicis bombing on 15 September, 1974.

Carlos argued that he should not be required to testify against himself and said he faced death if he divulged operational information.

He told the court: "You don't snitch, and you don't cooperate with a court you don't recognise."

Georges Holleaux, a lawyer representing the two widows of the men killed and 16 other people affected by the attacks, said before the trial that his clients relished the chance of seeing Carlos face justice.

Little known at the time of the shopping arcade attack, Carlos rose to international notoriety the following year when his commando group burst into a meeting of the powerful OPEC oil cartel in Vienna, taking 11 hostages. Three people were killed.

He is already serving life sentences for the murders of two policemen in Paris in 1975 and of a former comrade who betrayed him.

He was also found guilty of four bombings in Paris and Marseille in 1982 and 1983, some targeting trains, which killed 11 people and injured nearly 150.

His nickname came from a fictional terrorist in the 1971 Frederick Forsyth novel, "The Day of the Jackal", which was turned into a popular film.