An accomplice of Carlos the Jackal was jailed for nine years today by a German court that found him guilty of murder during the urban guerrilla's hostage raid on an OPEC oil ministers' meeting in Vienna in 1975.
Judge Heinrich Gehrke read out the verdict in the Frankfurt courtroom where Hans-Joachim Klein, 52, has been on trial since October after being captured in France and extradited in 1998.
Klein admitted he took part in the pro-Palestinian attack in December 1975 led by the Venezuelan-born Carlos, who is now in jail in Paris.
It left three people dead but the German, who was shot himself but escaped into hiding, denied killing anyone. Carlos accused Klein of shooting an Iraqi bodyguard.
Klein, for whom German Foreign Minister Mr Joschka Fischer spoke as a character witness in a trial that has turned uncomfortable attention on the deputy chancellor's militant past, escaped a life sentence because he aided investigators and publicly renounced terrorism during 20 years on the run.
Mr Fischer described Klein as a loser who attached himself to the radical left in Frankfurt in the early 1970s before being seduced into taking up arms with international guerrillas.
The minister took part in street battles himself but denies any link to terrorism.
