A Paris jury was last night considering a triple murder charge against the international terrorist known as "Carlos the Jackal".
The nine jurors, the presiding judge and his two advisors retired at about 9 p.m. after "Carlos", whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, completed a four-hour rambling statement condemning the Palestinian cause, "war to the death" and war against what he termed the "McDonaldisation" of humanity.
The verdict was expected late last night or early this morning with Carlos likely to be sentenced to life imprisonment. Carlos was already sentenced by a French court to the same term in 1992 in absentia.
Earlier, after about 90 minutes of the Carlos speech, the Assize Court judge, Mr Yves Corneloup, looking resigned, adjourned the hearing for a short interval.
Carlos praised his defence lawyers, notably Ms Isabelle CoutantPeyre as "the daughter of an old French family, the real France".
He repeated that the 1975 murders of which he is accused were a set-up, and blamed Israel, "the first terrorist state in history".
He spoke incoherently of reported sightings of himself in Copenhagen wearing bell-bottom trousers and begging, and of the former Panamanian president, Manuel Noriega, and Cuban intelligence agents.
Earlier another defence lawyer, Mr Olivier Maudret, urged acquittal for the accused, "not for Carlos, but in the name of the law and for the truth".
Carlos (48), a Venezuelan, is accused of shooting dead two French secret service agents and a Lebanese informer. He was handed over to France by Sudan in 1994 after almost 25 years on the run.
Ms Coutant-Peyre spoke of a "trick" which she said was the work of the Israeli secret service, Mossad, adding that the case was "built on a lie, a plot, a manipulation".
She said that "for 500 million south Americans and a billion Muslims, Carlos is the fighter for a cause he chose, and not the `bloody mercenary' depicted by the French press."
Mr Maudret said Carlos would probably spend the rest of his life behind bars even if he were acquitted, because of other terrorist trials he faces, and criticised the judicial investigation of the case.
On Monday, to guffaws from the accused, the prosecutor, Mr Gino Necchi called for a life term for Carlos, saying the sentence he was asking for was "not a question of war, of revenge, but of implementing the law of the republic".
Carlos the Jackal: product of 1960s internationalism: page 9