VENEZUELA: CARLOS THE JACKAL'S FATHER DENOUNCES TRIAL AS ILLEGAL

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• published: 21 Jul 2015
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Spanish/Nat With his son Ilich -- better known as "Carlos the Jackal" -- on trial in Paris for a triple murder, Jose Altagracia Ramirez Navas says he would defend him in court if he could. During an extensive interview with APTV, the wealthy 80-year-old lawyer denounced the trial as "illegal" and said he was fighting to have Ilich returned to Venezuela. The start of "Carlos the Jackal's" triple murder trial in Paris prompted his father, Jose Altagracia Ramirez, to break his silence on Wednesday. He wants to try to persuade the world that his son is no villain. SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) "My son is not a terrorist. He is a guerrilla, a revolutionary fighter who has dedicated long years of his youth to the fight for the cause of the Palestinian people." SUPER CAPTION: Jose Altagracia Ramirez, Father of "Carlos the Jackal" "Carlos the Jackal" is the man accused of some of the Cold War's most sensational terrorist attacks. By Ilich's own count, he had killed 83 people before his capture. The 1972 massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes, and the 1976 hijacking of an Air France jet to Entebbe in Uganda, are just two events which made the headlines. Carlos hit the international stage in December 1975 when he and five others burst into an OPEC meeting and killed three people in four minutes. They held 70 hostages - including the 11 OPEC ministers - who, at the time, were among the most powerful men in the world. Carlos' father, an ageing Marxist lawyer who co-founded Venezuela's Communist Party, named each of his sons after the leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Vladimir Ilich Lenin. He argues that France has no legal right to try Ilich because French intelligence agents "kidnapped" him from Sudan in 1994 without extradition papers. SOUNDBITE: (English) "If I could only speak French fluently and was entitled to work in France as a lawyer, I would be there to reject this illegal trial, not conformable to law and lacking any validity." SUPER CAPTION: Jose Altagracia Ramirez, father Ramirez said he has sent thousands of dollars for his son's defence, and that his son's human rights have been violated. It has been 22 years since Ramirez says he last saw Ilich, now 48, but they are together in spirit. SOUNDBITE: (English) "Ilich is present everyday and every night." SUPER CAPTION: Jose Altagracia Ramirez, father This Polaroid photograph, taken in prison in May 1996, shows Ilich standing in what seems a park - actually a cloth backdrop of flowers and trees. A thick Cuban Cohiba cigar juts from his mouth. Cursive letters written in Spanish under the image read: "What a delicious Cohiba!" Ilich and his brothers moved to London with their mother in 1965 after their parents divorced. Ramirez visited the boys about once a year until 1975 - by then, the brothers had moved back to Venezuela and Ilich was a well-known mercenary. Ramirez's sympathy for Ilich finds more than a few supporters among Venezuelans, who prefer to overlook his terrorist past. But in France, Ilich is standing trial in a Paris courtroom, charged with triple murder. His trial is expected to last another week. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/07d79bef5d671a6af93b7f54d0f1e297 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork