Guerrilla leader Carlos the Jackal issued a letter from jail today contesting any possible link between Osama bin Laden and attacks planned in France in the mid-1990s.
The failed attacks which were planned to hit Marseille in 1996-7 have been attributed to other extremist Islamic factions, the Takfir-wal-Hijra and Algerian-based Armed Islamic Group (GIA).
Carlos said Sheikh Osama had in fact escaped a murder attempt on his life in Sudan in 1994 after a death edict issued by the Takfir-wal-Hijra group.
"These bloody tales prove the impossibility of any form of cooperation between Sheikh Osama bin Laden and Takfir-walHijra," Carlos said in the letter. Sheikh Osama rejected the extremist positions of Takfir, he added.
His message was issued to the media in the form of a letter to his lawyer and lover, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, who said last month she planned to wed the Venezuelan-born revolutionary.
Carlos, whose real name is Illich Ramirez Sanchez, is believed responsible for 80 killings in the name of the Palestinian cause during the 1970s and 1980s.
Twenty-four people suspected of membership or links with the Takfir group, which originated in Egypt, are on trial in France.
One of those in the dock told investigators in the run-up to the trial that the Takfir and the GIA had forged an alliance in 1996 with support from bin Laden to launch attacks in France.
The defendant, Nacer Mettai, has since retracted that statement and French prosecutors have said they have no hard proof so far of any link between bin Laden and the French-based network of extremists.