President Hugo Chavez is praising Carlos the Jackal, the Venezuelan once notorious for a series of Cold War era bombings, assassinations and hostage dramas, saying he was in fact a "revolutionaty fighter" and not a terrorist.

Chavez lauded Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, during a speech Nov. 20, saying: "I defend him. It doesn't matter to me what they say tomorrow in Europe."

Ramirez is currently serving a life sentence in a French prison for the 1975 murders of two French intelligence agents and an alleged informant.

He has testified that he led a 1975 attack that killed three people at the OPEC headquarters in Vienna, Austria. He also has been linked to the 1976 hijacking of an Air France jet en route to Uganda.