After Moussaoui's arrest, his family hired the irrepressible Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, a Parisian defense lawyer with impeccable terrorist connections. She instantly became the international cheerleader for Moussaoui. Without bothering to talk to the defendant, she proclaimed him innocent and charged that the case was a "big manipulation" by the United States government to find a "scapegoat." Then she demanded that the trial be moved to France because it wouldn't be "fair" in the United States.
Coutant-Peyre is best known as the lawyer and fiancee of Carlos the Jackal, whose real name is Illich Ramirez Sanchez. The Jackal - a convert to Islam and an enthusiastic supporter of Osama Bin Laden and the Sept. 11 attacks - claims that he too is a victim of human rights violations. He was kidnapped in 1994 in the Sudan, hauled in a sack to Paris and sentenced to life in prison for killing two French policemen and an informant.
As I marveled at how the Jackals bride could reconcile her tender vision of him with his exultation at the murder of so many innocents, she answered my question. She understands that Carlos has killed many people, but thats okay, because she and he both believe in the communist ideal. I had never really thought of terrorism as a set of ideals.
How fortunate for Isabelle and her chubby terrorist that he was convicted in France, a sophisticated society that allows him presumably with the approval of the French taxpayers --to spend the rest of his life smoking Cuban cigars, cuddling with Isabelle (whose heterosexual competition in prison for his affections is limited), chatting with her at his whim outside the normal prison constraints on visitors, and commending the enemies of his captors. Had he been convicted in a society less sophisticated and less tolerant of murderers, he might have ended up on a prison gurney with a powerful IV.
May France's Jacque Iraq be smacked, whacked and hacked.