Carlos the Jackal has a new job. The world's most famous terrorist has started to write a column in a Venezuelan newspaper from his solitary confinement cell in a maximum security French prison.
Under the catchline "La Bastilla" - Spanish for the Bastille - Carlos's weekly column offers his imprisoned, revolutionary thoughts to compatriots in his home nation.
The musings of the 49-year-old inmate - whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez - show that he has hardly mellowed in middle age. His columns are never more than a few paragraphs from a swipe at Western "imperialism".
In his first piece in May he criticised NATO's aggression and defended Slobodan Milosevic as being the modern incarnation of former Yugoslav leader Tito's independent spirit. In a later article he launched a manifesto for "militant revolutionaries, communists, anarchists, antifascists, anti-imperialists held in prisons of the imperialist bourgoisie". He has discussed the politics of Sudan and this week's contribution is a criticism of US historian Francis Fukuyama.
Carlos's journalistic odyssey started when he read a copy of la Razon, a Caracas-based weekly paper, in La Santi prison near Paris, where he is serving a life sentence for the murder of two French policemen and their Lebanese informant in 1975. Via his lawyers he asked if he could write for it. Editor Pablo Lopez Ulacio agreed, saying that his paper was open to all opinions.
Carlos's new found career, however, is not an isolated phenomenon. It is part of his rehabilitation in Venezuela where he is bizarrely becoming a human rights issue - despite his apparent cold-blooded involvement in several terrorist acts.
According to an increasing number of his compatriots, Carlos's detention at the hands of the French is not just illegal but an affront to Venezuelan sovereignty.
Carlos's family and supporters allege that his capture by French agents in Sudan in 1994 after 19 years on the run did not follow correct extradition procedures.
"He was assaulted in the middle of the night and a few hours later was in Paris. It was a blatant kidnap. "Even if it is true that he committed the crimes he is accused of he is still entitled to have his rights respected," says Vladimir Ramirez Sanchez, Carlos's 40-year-old brother.
Carlos's notoriety comes from his pro-Palestinian acts of terrorism during the mid 1970s, in particular the kidnapping of OPEC oil ministers in Vienna in 1975. Austria is applying to extradite Carlos from France on charges of murder, kidnap and trespass - a move which is seen by Vladimir as France trying to get rid of their famous prisoner because they realise their fragile legal position.
Vladimir, who runs an engineering firm in the Venezuelan city Valencia with the third brother Lenin, aged 47, is leading the campaign to free his brother. "I am motivated because he is family, even though I haven't spoken to him for 24 years. To me there has been a succession of illegal acts by the French. The political aspect of what he was fighting for is irrelevant. The correction would be to set him free."
The case became a talking point in Caracas earlier this year when it was revealed that shortly after taking office, President Hugo Chavez wrote Carlos a letter addressing him as "distinguished compatriot". Chavez, a former army officer who despite a failed attempt at a coup seven years ago was elected in a landslide victory last year, defended his letter saying it showed human solidarity and not political support.
Taking advantage of momentum built up by Vladimir's lobbying, a group of leading leftwing figures in May launched a "solidarity committee" as a rallying point for Carlos's supporters.
The Ramirez family hopes to turn the case into a diplomatic row between Venezuela and France. Vladimir has had an audience with the Foreign Minister, Jose Vicente Rangel, who promised to investigate if France had acted illegally. "I am very positive that the government will come to the conclusion that France is in the wrong," said Vladimir.