A week before Christmas, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal and already serving life for three murders, was given another life sentence at the Palais de Justice in Paris for masterminding a bombing campaign that killed 11 people, according to a witness turning one of them into mincemeat. In order to finish its business on schedule the court sat until just before midnight on Thursday, 15 December: the accused, asked if he had anything to say before sentence was passed, nodded and took more than five hours to say it. ‘Excuse me for taking my time,’ he said, pausing to drink some water. ‘But I’m a living archive and talkative. Revolutionaries tend to be and most of the people at my level are dead.’

LRB 26 January 2012 | PDF Download