Who is Carlos the Jackal and why is he on trial?

Carlos the Jackal, one of the world's most infamous terrorists and responsible for a series of headline-making attacks in the 1970s and early 1980s, goes on trial today for the deadly bombing of a Paris shop more than 40 years ago.

Who is Carlos the Jackal?

Born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez in Venezuela, the self-styled "professional revolutionary", the head of special operations for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was dubbed "Carlos the Jackal" by the press, after the fictional terrorist in the 1971 Frederick Forsyth novel, The Day of the Jackal.

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He was arrested in the Sudanese capital Khartoum in 1994, after years on the run, and is serving a life sentence for the murders of two policemen in Paris in 1975 and that of a Lebanese revolutionary.

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.

What is he being tried for now?

Ramirez, now 67, is accused of orchestrating a grenade attack on a busy shop in the heart of Paris in September 1974, in which two men were killed and 34 injured.

Prosecutors says the attack was linked to a hostage-taking at the French embassy in the Hague, in the Netherlands, that had begun two days before.

In an interview with Al Watan Al-Arabi magazine in 1979, Ramirez admitted to throwing the grenade to force the French government to give in to the demands of the communist militant group the Japanese Red Army, which was demanding the release of one of its members who had been arrested in Paris two months earlier.

Ramirez and the hostage-takers achieved their aim: the Japanese suspect was released and travelled to Yemen with other members of his team.

A blast from the past

With attention in France now focused on the threat of Islamist attacks, "the trial in Paris will reach back to a time when Europe was repeatedly targeted by ruthless groups sympathetic to the Palestinian cause", says The Guardian.