Carlos the Jackal Gets Second Life Sentence

Cold War militant Carlos the Jackal was sentenced to a second life term by a Paris court on Thursday after being found guilty of a number of bombings in France three decades ago.

Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, was once the world's most wanted international terrorist. The self-proclaimed professional revolutionary” appeared in front of a special criminal tribunal in Paris on Thursday to hear the final verdict in the case against him. The court had connected the Jackal to four bombings that took place in France between 1982 and 1983 that killed 11 people and injured nearly 200.

The verdict came around midnight and Ramirez was defiant until the end. Before his sentence was read, Ramirez was allowed to make his final remarks, which took five hours.

His speech was reportedly emotional and self-congratulating and he praised the recently deceased figures Moammar Gaddafi and Osama bin Laden, as well as Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceau?escu.

Like a modern-day Scheherazade, Ramirez wove story after story, often smiling and waxing nostalgic about former comrades, and sometimes turning fiery to rail at the system, Reuters reported on Friday.

There is nothing ... to connect me with these four attacks, he told the court, making a zero sign with his fingers.

Two of Ramirez's associates were also given life sentences. Both Johannes Weinrich, a German national who became the Jackal's right-hand man, and Palestinian Ali Kamal al-Issawi were tried and sentenced in absentia. Weinrich is currently serving a life sentence for murder in Germany, while Issawi is still at large.

Ramirez's career as a militant began in 1975, when he led an attack on a meeting of OPEC leaders in Vienna, where he took 60 hostages in the name of Palestinian independence.

He had already been serving a life sentence for the murder of two French police officers and an informant in 1975.