PARIS, Dec 23: The state prosecutor on Monday sought life imprisonment for the man known as ``Carlos the Jackal,'' saying the two special investigators killed in 1975, along with another man were unarmed targets.

``The nature of the punishment must be equal to the crime,''said prosecutor Gino Necchi in final arguments on the seventh day of the trial.

The Venezuelan-born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez mimicked silent applauding at the end of the more than 90-minute address to the jury, composed of nine citizens and three judges. He then kissed the hand of his lawyer Isabelle Countant-Peyre.

The 48-year-old Ramirez previously risked a maximum 30-year prison term if convicted of the killings of inspectors Raymond Dous and Jean Donatini and Michel Moukharbal, a Lebanese colleague of Ramirez.

The three were shot with an automatic pistol at a less than 50-cm range. Necchi, along with lawyers for the families of the victims, civil parties in the case, denounced what they suggested was Ramirez' cowardliness for allegedly killing unarmed men in a panic then failing to own up to it at the trial.

The audience was twice suspended on Monday because of new demands by the defence, once for the appearance of four new witnesses and again because Ramirez claimed last Monday that he was without a lawyer for an hour after his own attorney walked out in protest and before a court-appointed lawyer arrived.

Presiding judge Yves Corneloup dismissed the demand for new witnesses and rejected Ramirez' technical arguments, which, if accepted, risked cancelling all ensuing debate over the past week. The defence has sought since the start of the trial the presence of three eyewitnesses to the shootings. The prosecution has contended that they were unable to find the people in question, all Latin American students studying in Paris at the time.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.