Carlos the Jackal faces new trial

Carlos was jailed for life in 1997

Ilich Ramirez Sanchez - better known as Carlos the Jackal - is to be tried in France over a series of bombings in the 1980s that left at least 11 dead.

Carlos, 57, is already serving a life sentence in France for the 1975 murders of two French intelligence agents and an informer.

Leading anti-terrorism judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere has ordered the new trial.

Carlos earned international notoriety as a mastermind of fatal bomb attacks, assassinations and hostage-takings.

'Rotting democracies'

The new trial will be on charges relating to "killings and destruction of property using explosive substances" in France in 1982 and 1983.

In addition to those killed, more than 100 people were injured.

Carlos' most infamous raid was on Opec in Vienna in 1975

The attacks Carlos has previously been linked to include the bombing of a train from Paris to Toulouse in March 1982, an attack outside the offices of the Arab newspaper al-Watan in Paris in April 1982 and a blast at a Marseilles railway station in December 1983.

No trial date has been set or any other details released.

Carlos' most infamous act was leading a raid in Vienna in 1975, when his group took 11 ministers of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries hostage.

His group left with hostages on a plane provided by Austrian authorities and was eventually given asylum in Algiers.

Carlos was seized from a hospital room in Sudan in 1994 and hauled to Paris inside a sack by French agents.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment in France in 1997 and is being held in Clairvaux prison in the east of the country.

In a book published in 2003, Carlos praised al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden as a "shining" example.

Carlos, a Venezuelan citizen and a convert to Islam, says: "From now on terrorism is going to be more or less a daily part of the landscape of your rotting democracies."