Carlos the Jackal sues TV channel to protect image

Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, is trying to protect his reputation from the confines of his Paris prison cell. Ramirez Sanchez, who has claimed to be responsible for almost 2,000 deaths, is suing a French production company over a three-part television drama because he is concerned that the film could tarnish his "biographical image".

Long before Osama bin Laden, Ramirez Sanchez was the world's most wanted terrorist. He became 'public enemy number one' following a series of bloody attacks in the mid- to late-1970s and early 1980s. Described as the "most dangerous man of all time", Ramirez Sanchez has been the focus of numerous books and films. Not all of these have been flattering, but now it seems that he is determined to preserve his legend in his own way. 

With the help of his wife Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, a French lawyer whom he married in prison in 2001, Ramirez Sanchez is demanding that the TV producers hand the footage over to check for errors. The couple also want a say on the final cut before the drama is broadcast on the French TV channel Canal+. A verdict on the case is due tomorrow.

Now 60, Ramirez Sanchez became notorious when he took 70 OPEC oil ministers hostage in Vienna in 1975, but it is also thought that he masterminded the murder of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich Olympics in 1972. The Venezuelan-born Ramirez Sanchez carried out his attacks in the name of Palestinian liberation and has converted to Islam since his imprisonment.

In the early Eighties he was held responsible for several bomb blasts in Paris and is also blamed for shooting and wounding Edward Sieff, the president of Marks & Spencer, at his home in London in 1973. 

At the peak of his infamy, Ramirez Sanchez was wanted in at least five European countries. He was finally brought to justice in 1994, captured by French police as he recovered from surgery in Sudan. He had already been sentenced in absentia to life in prison.  

Ramirez Sanchez was given his nickname Carlos the Jackal when a copy of Frederick Forsyth's novel The Day of the Jackal was found in his belongings and mistakenly believed to be his.

In an interview this week Coutant-Peyre argued that the drama will portray her husband as the instigator behind crimes for which he has not been found guilty. But the film's producers insist that it will be clearly presented as a fictional interpretation of Ramirez Sanchez's life.

"As far as the facts are concerned, we know almost everything about him already," said producer Daniel Leconte. "Carlos's own life actions destroyed his name. He doesn't need me for that." ·