Jackal goes on hunger strike

Carlos the Jackal, once the world’s most wanted terrorist is on a hunger strike to protest being transferred to solitary confinement at a high-security French prison.

The Venezuelan, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, stopped eating and drinking yesterday after prison authorities tried to move him from his Paris cell, said his lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre.

After refusing the transfer, Ramirez was put in a special disciplinary section and was to appear before a disciplinary panel, prison officials said.

Coutant-Peyre also said that Ramirez was being “deprived” of his diabetes medication, a claim prison authorities denied, saying Ramirez was refusing the treatment.

Ramirez was captured in Sudan in 1994 by French intelligence agents and brought back to Paris, where he was convicted for the 1975 murders of two French secret agents and an alleged informer.

He is serving a life sentence, and could be tried in other cases still outstanding.

He gained international notoriety during the Cold War for staging a string of deadly bombings, assassinations and hostage seizures. He is also suspected in the 1976 Palestinian hijacking of a French jetliner in flight to Entebbe, Uganda.

In March, Ramirez angered authorities by secretly giving an interview to a TV station, which violates the rules. In the interview, he said he refused to ask forgiveness from his victims. “There are no innocent victims,” he said.