“Carlos The Jackal” Questioned By German Prosecutors
PARIS (AFP) - Convicted Venezuelan "Carlos the Jackal", questioned here Tuesday by German prosecutors, accused former comrade-in-arms Hans-Joachim Klein of murder during the bloody attack on an OPEC conference in Vienna in 1975.
The famed scofflaw said the group that carried out the operation was made up of six people including a woman, Gabriele Kroescher-Tiedemann, alias Nada, who has since died.
Carlos, 51, said Klein shot dead a security man who was about to arrest the young woman.
"Klein turned towards Nada and fired a bullet into the head of the guard," he said.
The German prosecutors were forced to travel to Paris after the French justice ministry refused to transfer Carlos to Frankfurt to testify in Klein's trial because of concerns over security.
Carlos insisted: "It's Klein, it's evident," though he said he had not personally witnessed the scene. He had heard about it from numerous sources, including Klein himself.
Klein, 52, is being tried in Frankfurt for his role in the 1975 attack on a meeting of oil ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in which two security men and a delegate were killed and 70 people taken hostage.
Klein has never disputed his part in the hostage taking, but denies the murder and attempted murder charges against him and has long been repentant for his past.
Throughout Tuesday's hearing Carlos, real name Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, said he had masterminded the attack in Vienna after which Saudi Arabia paid a $50 million ransom. He arrived at the Paris courthouse surrounded by his attorneys and sporting a big smile for photographers.
He has been confined to a high security prison in Paris since his 1997 sentence to life imprisonment for killing two French policemen and a Lebanese informer.
He was arrested by French secret agents in Sudan in 1994 and has since been behind bars.
Carlos still faces trial in France over several other attacks in the 1970s and 1980s linked to his days as one of the world's most wanted guerrillas.
Austria is also seeking his extradition in order to try him for the 1975 attack in Vienna.
