Carlos the Jackal sues French captors over 'illegal' Sudan arrest

CARLOS the Jackal, once the world's most infamous terrorist, is suing the former head of the French foreign intelligence agency for his kidnapping and illegal restraint. Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, was arrested in Sudan in 1994 and taken to France for trial after being accidentally spotted by the then French intelligence chief, General Philippe Rondot.

However, Carlos's lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, who is also his wife, says new details show that he was illegally kidnapped by French authorities on foreign soil.

The 56-year-old terrorist, who is a Venezuelan citizen, launched the case from his French prison cell where he is serving a life sentence for the murder of three people. In addition to Mr Rondot, the lawsuit also targets his alleged accomplices in the arrest.

His action is based upon a newspaper interview which Mr Rondot gave shortly after his retirement to the centre-right daily newspaper Le Figaro in January in which the French intelligence officer spoke about his career, including the capture of Carlos the Jackal.

"I got him by chance," said Mr Rondot who had been hunting the Jackal for 20 years. "I came across him in a hotel while he was buying some newspapers. I put together a file of targets with photographs to support it."

The career and life on the run of the middle-aged man, once world's most wanted, ended in a rather undignified way when the portly terrorist was finally seized by French intelligence agents after he had been sedated for a liposuction operation in a Khartoum clinic.

He was then flown to Paris. It is believed that the Sudanese authorities may have agreed to hand Carlos over because the country's Islamic fundamentalists were angered by the terrorist's playboy lifestyle.

In the interview Mr Rondot said he had called the office of then Socialist president Francois Mitterrand to report his success as well as the office of then interior minister Charles Pasqua.

Ms Coutant-Peyre said Mr Rondot's role had long been suspected.

"Concretely, this is the first time that Rondot has confirmed that he was among the kidnappers," said Ms Coutant-Peyre who married Carlos in a Muslim ceremony performed in a glass- walled prison room in August 2001.

The pair met when the lawyer joined Carlos's legal team in 1997, then headed by Jacques Verges, nicknamed the Devil's Advocate. After meeting his future bride, Carlos rapidly fired Mr Verges and made her the head of his defence team.

Carlos the Jackal gained international notoriety as the mastermind of deadly bombings, assassinations and hostage-takings and was the world's most wanted terrorist in the 1970s and 1980s.

He was the man behind the seizure of 70 hostages at the OPEC oil ministers' meeting in Vienna in 1975 and linked to the 1972 Munich massacre.

He was sentenced to life in prison in 1997 for the murders of two French agents and an informer in Paris in 1975.

A convert to Islam, Carlos claimed responsibility in a 2004 television interview for killing more than 1,500 people in the cause of Palestinian liberation.

Carlos has already appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, saying the French authorities had violated his rights by holding him in solitary confinement in a small cell for eight years from 1994 until 2002, during which time, he said, he was only let out for a daily two- hour walk.

The court ruled against him, saying that special measures were needed to detain a man once regarded as the most dangerous terrorist in the world.