Covid-19 kills former Labanese militant Anis Naccache

Damascus, Feb 22 (AFP/APP): Lebanese militant Anis Naccache, an accomplice of the notorious Carlos the Jackal, died Monday of coronavirus in a Damascus hospital at the age of 70, Syrian state media said.

Naccache took part in the 1975 OPEC conference hostage-taking in Vienna. Hailing him as a “thinker and freedom fighter”, the official SANA news agency said he was “admitted into intensive care two days ago… because his health deteriorated as a result of Covid-19”. Authorities will repatriate his remains for burial in Lebanon, said the pro-Damascus Al-Mayadeen television channel.

Naccache was jailed in France for leading an attempted assassination of Iran’s former prime minister Shahpur Bakhtiar in Paris in 1980. A five-man hit squad led by Naccache killed two people in the attack on Bakhtiar’s home in the western suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine.

They were all jailed for life, but former president Francois Mitterrand pardoned them in 1990. Naccache is known as the Lebanese accomplice of Carlos the Jackal, born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, a Venezuelan who is serving a life sentence in France.

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