Saturday, December 27, 1997
Farewell to the Jackal
The law was a long time catching up with Carlos the Jackal,
but now it has.
Unswayed by a rambling four-hour monologue in which he defended
his murderous career as "simple love of justice," a
French jury sentenced Ilich Ramirez Sanchez to life in prison.
The instant case was the 1975 murder of two French investigators
and their informant, but there were ample other crimes to justify
locking Ramirez away for life -- bombings, hijackings, kidnappings,
almost always of the innocent.
Ramirez said of his life sentence, "I'm 48 years old,
so it could be another 40 or 50 years. That doesn't horrify me."
His life span expectations, 88 to 98, seem overly optimistic,
given the rigors of the French penal system, but what does or
does not horrify Ramirez no longer matters.
What does matter is the example he sets for other would-be
revolutionaries contemplating a life of terrorism: a lonely old
man raving in his prison cell, both himself and his cause forgotten.
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Copyright ©1997,
Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps Publications
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