Isabelle Coutant-Peyre (5 July 1953 – 12 April 2024) was a French lawyer who was engaged to

Ilich Ramírez Sánchez Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (; born 12 October 1949), also known as Carlos the Jackal () or simply Carlos, is a Venezuelan convict who conducted a series of assassinations and terrorist bombings from 1973 to 1985. A committed Marxist–Leninist, h ...

, the international terrorist better known as "

Carlos the Jackal Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (; born 12 October 1949), also known as Carlos the Jackal () or simply Carlos, is a Venezuelan convict who conducted a series of assassinations and terrorist bombings from 1973 to 1985. A committed Marxist–Leninist, ...

Life and career

Coutant-Peyre represented

Zacarias Moussaoui Zacarias Moussaoui (, '; born 30 May 1968) is a French member of al-Qaeda who pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court to conspiring to kill citizens of the United States as part of the 9/11 attacks. He is serving life imprisonment without the ...

early on during his imprisonment, while he was awaiting trial for his role in the

terrorist Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war aga ...

attacks of

11 September 2001 The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

. Married to a civil servant, she had three sons; Florent, Gabriel and Aurélien. She became a lawyer and worked with Jacques Vergès, defender of Djamila Bouhired and she supported her defence of "revolutionary fighters" with income from her activities as a business lawyer. In her political cases, she employed "rupture" techniques. She was briefly jailed for likening

French police Law enforcement in France is centralized at the national level. Recently, legislation has allowed local governments to hire their own police officers which are called the ''Municipal Police (France), police municipale''. There are two nation ...

to the

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

. Her fiancé,

, known as "

", is held at Clairvaux Prison, part of the general inmate population, and their attempts to marry were frustrated by legal issues.

Conjugal visit A conjugal visit is a scheduled period in which an inmate of a prison or jail is permitted to spend several hours or days in private with a visitor. The visitor is usually their legal partner. The generally recognized basis for permitting such vis ...

s can only be made after a civil marriage occurs; a Muslim ceremony performed in 2001 (when Carlos was married to his second wife and Isabelle was married to her first husband) reportedly had no legal force. Her clients included Stellio Capo Chichi, Youssouf Fofana (murderer of Ilan Halimi), Roger Garaudy, Mohamed Benalel Merah (father of Mohammed Merah responsible for the Toulouse and Montauban shootings), Charles Sobhraj, and the

Islamic Republic of Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

against the film ''

Argo In Greek mythology, the ''Argo'' ( ; ) was the ship of Jason and the Argonauts. The ship was built with divine aid, and some ancient sources describe her as the first ship to sail the seas. The ''Argo'' carried the Argonauts on their quest fo ...

''.

Death

Coutant-Peyre died on 12 April 2024, at the age of 70.

Bibliography

* "Grand témoin : Isabelle Coutant-Peyre", in ''Hallier Edernellement vôtre'',

Jean-Pierre Thiollet Jean-Pierre Thiollet (; born 9 December 1956) is a French writer and journalist. He is also affiliated with the European Confederation of Independent Trade Unions, a European trade union. Career Thiollet attended a school in Châtelleraul ...

, Neva Editions, 2019, p. 173–188. * "In memoriam : Isabelle Coutant-Peyre", in ''Hallier, chagrins d'amour'',

, Neva Editions, 2024, p. 221–225.

References

External links

Isabelle's love for Carlos the Jackal
theage.com.au. Accessed 17 April 2024. 1953 births 2024 deaths Place of birth missing 20th-century French women lawyers 21st-century French women lawyers 20th-century French lawyers 21st-century French lawyers {{France-law-bio-stub