Venezuelan Ilich Ramirez “the Jackal” Found Guilty in France, Demands Extradition

After a French court sentenced him to a second life sentence, Ilich Ramirez, or the “Jackal” as the mainstream press calls him, has requested to be extradited to Venezuela.

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Mérida, December 19th 2011 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – After a French court sentenced him to a second life sentence, Ilich Ramirez, or the “Jackal” as the mainstream press calls him, has requested to be extradited to Venezuela.

Ramirez, a Venezuelan born pro- Palestinian fighter, was on trial this time for orchestrating four bombings in France in 1982 and 1983 which killed 11 people and injured more than 100. The trail began on 7 November. Ramirez is already serving a life sentence in France for the murder of two French police officers and a Lebanese informant in 1975. Ramirez was kidnapped in Sudan in 1994, flown to France and found guilty at the trial, which was held in December 1997. He has denied the killings, accusing the Israeli secret service of being behind them.

The French “terrorism” court, made up of seven magistrates, ruled last week that Ramirez should complete a further 18 years in prison (of the thirty year sentence), on top of the current sentence he is serving, which would have seen him on parole in 2012.

“There’s an agreement between [Venezuelan] president [Hugo] Chavez and [former French president] Jacque Chirac from January 1999, confirmed by [French] president [Nicolas] Sarkozy, that when the trial was over, I would return to Venezuela… the only person who can stop this is the French head of state,” Ramirez told Venezuela’s Radio Mundial yesterday via telephone.

However this agreement between Venezuela and France is unconfirmed. Also, the Venezuelan Communist Party marched in Caracas last month, demanding Ramirez be repatriated.

 “I’m innocent, but I’ve been found guilty without proof or witness,” he said.

“The judgement was just a matter of protocol that they had to carry out …because he’s already been sentenced by the media,” Ramirez’s brother, Vladmir, told the Radio of the South.

“If they find me guilty or not guilty doesn’t matter to me, the problem is political, and it’s resolved in a political way. Even though traitors in Venezuela, corrupt people who receive commissions and are deeply involved in dirty things are doing everything possible to delay my return to Venezuela,” Ilich Ramirez said.

Vladamir Ramirez further denounced in his interview that the civil servants in France haven’t “fully complied with President Chavez’s instructions” to lend legal and consular support to his brother.

Chavez has said that the Venezuelan state can’t “permit that any Venezuelan is abused, be they accused of anything, in any part of the world” in reference to the imprisonment, torture, and trial of Ilich Ramirez. He has also said that Ramirez is a “combatant…for the Palestinian cause”.

Ilich Ramirez also blamed the United States for “doing everything, even the impossible” so that he doesn’t return to Venezuela.

During the interview with Radio Mundial Ramirez didn’t want to go into detail about the appeal his lawyers are planning, but said that he’d been told he will be transferred to a “maximum security prison under isolation conditions”.

Directing himself to Chavez, Ramirez ended the interview saying, “A hug for my leader, ever onwards… you have just one defect: you’re too human, you’re a leader of parachutists who doesn’t like blood. I don’t like blood either, but blood has to be shed, above all the blood of the enemy.”