Carlos the Jackal Sues to Protect Image

Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, the imprisoned international terrorist better known as Carlos the Jackal, is suing a French production company making a documentary about him, demanding final cut on the film. Ramírez argues that the film will violate his intellectual property rights to his “biographical image” unless he’s allowed to make changes, and that it accuses him of terrorist acts he hasn’t been convicted of.

“It’s extravagant,” Ramírez’s lawyer and wife tells the Washington Post. The filmmakers argue that granting Ramírez final cut would undermine their freedom of speech. It’s hardly the first unflattering book or film about Ramírez, who’s serving a life sentence in France for attacks committed on behalf of Palestinian liberation. The Jackal was by far the most infamous terrorist of his generation; Robert Ludlum called him “the most dangerous man of all times.” (More Carlos the Jackal stories.)