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Ian James, Caracas Associate Press correspondent was either naive or made a blunder when he wrote a story on Sunday, commenting Venezuela's Hugo Chavez praise of Venezuelan condemned terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez alias "Carlos the Jackal".

Calling Carlos the Jackal an "alleged terrorist" is like calling Barack Obama an "alleged US president" and Ian James an "alleged AP hack"! wrote today Quico on his Caracas Cronicles.

We're talking about a guy who's not just been convicted in open court of killing two French police officers, but who's publically taken responsability for any number of notorious terrorist acts, including classics like kidnapping eleven OPEC oil minister all at once, and who's publicly defended such acts not only at the time, but also in retrospect, in a prison-cell book that accepts responsibility for and stridently vindicates his multi-decade campaign of threats, murders, kidnappings and bombings; a virtual compendium of terrorist acts.

I'm no ranting critic of the gringo MSM, but this article shows it at its spineless worst. Whatever editorial guideline it is that landed that adjective before that word makes no sense at all. The AP's decision to qualify the only profession Ilich Ramírez has ever known drains the word "alleged" of any meaning whatsoever, and tends to cast a patina of respectability on Hugo Chávez recent, full-throated defense of his brand of terrorist tactics.

Inexcusable, guys. Just inexcusable.

The Venezuelan president lauded the imprisoned Carlos – whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez – during a speech on Friday night, saying: "I defend him. It doesn't matter to me what they say tomorrow in Europe."

Ramirez is serving a life sentence in a French prison for the 1975 murders of two French secret agents and an alleged informant. He has testified that he led a 1975 attack that killed three people at the Opec headquarters in Vienna, Austria. He also has been linked to the 1976 hijacking of an Air France jet en route to Uganda.

"They accuse him of being a terrorist, but Carlos really was a revolutionary fighter," Mr Chavez said during a televised speech to applause from socialist politicians from various countries. He added Ramirez had aided the cause of the Palestinians, something Mr Chavez has also supported while verbally clashing with Israel.

Mr Chavez sought to defend other leaders who he said are wrongly labelled "bad guys" internationally, including Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mr Chavez called both of them brothers and said he now wonders whether Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was truly as brutal as he was reputed to be.

"We thought he was a cannibal," Mr Chavez said, referring to Amin, whose regime was notorious for torturing and killing suspected opponents in the 1970s. "I have doubts… I don't know, maybe he was a great nationalist, a patriot."

There is no exact figure for the number of people killed during Amin's 1971-79 regime, but it is estimated at up to 500,000 people.

Mr Chavez has previously called Ramirez a friend, and a controversy erupted in 1999 after the leftist leader wrote to him in prison, in response to a note from Ramirez.

Mr Chavez addressed Ramirez as "Dear Compatriot".

Mr Chavez's latest remarks were among his most strident in support of Ramirez. He said he believed Ramirez was unfairly convicted and called him "one of the great fighters of the Palestine Liberation Organisation" at the time.

Ramirez was captured in Sudan in 1994. He was convicted three years later.

In 2001, Ramirez told a French newspaper he felt "relief" when he heard about the 11 September terror attacks in the US.

He said he never had links with Osama bin Laden, but had "strategic points of agreement" with al-Qaeda about "the rules of conspiracy".

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