Carlos the Jackal

 

Carlos the Jackal was the name given to Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, a Venezuelan national who masterminded some of the most outrageous terror attacks of the twentieth century. Like Abu Nidal, Sanchez began his career as something of an idealist, but soon lost all sense of his political cause and began to kill at random, out of bloodlust and greed. During his long career of terror attacks, he also emerged as a man who loved to show off his fame and wealth, and who thoroughly enjoyed his position as one of the world’s most notorious criminals. For over two decades, he terrorised the general public of many countries in Europe with a series of brutal, senseless attacks, until he was driven underground and eventually handed over to the authorities for trial in France. Sanchez was convicted of three murders and given a life sentence for these crimes, but to date, he still has not been tried for all the attacks that he masterminded.

 

Terrorist education

 

Born in 1949 in Caracas, Venezuela, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez was named after the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilich Lenin. (In fact, the three sons of the family each took one of the the famous Russian leader’s names: Vladimir was the eldest, Ilich was the middle son, and Lenin the youngest.) His father was a millionaire, a lawyer who had made a fortune, but at the same time espoused extremely left-wing views. Sanchez grew up in this contradictory environment, being educated by left-wing militants while living in the lap of luxury. Some commentators have argued that this strange dichotomy, coupled with the instabilities of his parents’ relationship, may have caused Sanchez to become violent in later life, but that remains a matter of conjecture.

As a child, young Ilich attended a local school in Caracas. In his teenage years, encouraged by his father, he joined the youth movement of the national communist party. He learned to speak Arabic, Russian, English and French, as well as his native Spanish, which aided him in his later career as an international criminal, as he often posed as a language teacher in the different countries he visited. In 1966, he attended a training camp for guerrilla warfare in Cuba, learning some of the ideology and skills that were to shape his adult life as a terrorist.

 

‘Carlos the Jackal’

 

In 1966, Sanchez’ parents divorced, and he moved with his mother and brothers to London, England, where he continued his education. As a young man, he enrolled at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where he came into contact with the Communist Party there. From the start, he made it clear that his political interests lay in the problems of the Middle East, and thus he began to carve out a career for himself as an agitator on behalf of the Palestinian cause.

In the 1970s, Sanchez was sent to Amman, Jordan, to train as a guerrilla fighter for the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine). It was during this period that he began to use the name ‘Carlos’. (Later, ‘The Jackal’ was added, when a copy of the Frederick Forsyth spy thriller The Day of the Jackal was found by police at one of his many hideouts.) After this spell in the Middle East, he returned to London. There, possibly under orders from the PFLP, he performed his first terrorist act, shooting and seriously wounding British businessman Edward Seiff, as part of a protest against Jewish actions in Palestine. Seiff was a prominent Jewish figure, head of the department store Marks and Spencer, and the attack was apparently made to draw attention to the situation in the Middle East. Yet it was a strangely random episode: Sanchez called on Seiff’s house, forced his way in past the staff, brandishing a gun, and cornered Seiff, before shooting him in the head and running off, thinking that he had killed his victim. However, by sheer chance the bullet that lodged in Seiff’s head did not kill him, but only injured him severely. It later emerged that Sanchez’ attack was prompted by the assassination of Mohamed Boudia, a theatre director thought to be a Palestinian activist, by the Israeli secret service Mossad.

 

Senseless violence

 

Sanchez’ career as a terrorist continued with a failed bomb attack on a Jewish bank in London, and more bomb attacks on three pro-Israeli newspapers in France. In addition, Sanchez claimed responsibility for a grenade thrown at a Parisian restaurant that killed two people and injured thirty more. He was also involved in two grenade attacks on the Jewish airline, El Al, at Orly Airport near Paris.

Up to this point, the casualties in Sanchez’ attacks had been relatively limited. However, as his career as a terrorist progressed, his subsequent attacks became more brutal and reckless. In 1975, he led a team of terrorists to seize over sixty hostages at an OPEC meeting in Vienna, storming the meeting and demanding that a political statement he had written should be read on radio throughout the Middle East. During this attack, three people were killed. The terrorists then left with their hostages, including ministers from eleven OPEC states. After negotiations with the Austrian government, the hostages were released and the terrorists were granted political asylum.

It now became clear that Sanchez was enjoying his notoriety. Like Abu Nidal, who also began his career as a committed Palestinian activist, Sanchez appeared to have entirely lost the political rationale for his actions, and his attacks were becoming more senselessly violent. The attacks continued and seemed more and more arbitrary in nature: in 1982, for example, one person was killed and sixty-three injured when a car bomb exploded in the centre of Paris.

 

Playboy terrorist

 

Not surprisingly, the antics of ‘Carlos the Jackal’ engendered a great deal of antipathy towards the Palestinian cause among the general public and the media; consequently, the Palestinian groups that had protected him in the past now began to withdraw their support. Unfortunately, this did not stop Sanchez from pursuing his terrorist activities, and he continued to perpetrate bomb attacks across Europe throughout the next decade, killing dozens of people in the process and injuring hundreds.

Despite his unpopularity with the Palestinian activists, and his obviously violent personality, Sanchez continued to find that he had friends in high places. Although he was a known terrorist, and was wanted by the authorities of many countries in Europe, he was given asylum at various times by radical Arab regimes in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. He was protected by the governments of these countries from the agencies who were legitimately pursuing him for his crimes: from the CIA, Interpol and French intelligence in particular. Even when it became clear that Sanchez was acting as a mercenary, the Arab regimes continued to protect him. Sanchez’ career as a mercenary, selling himself and his men as guns for hire, is thought to have amassed him a fortune, and he was able to live in luxury while pursuing his taste for violence. He clearly enjoyed his wealth, and acquired a reputation as a flamboyant playboy and womaniser who enjoyed living the high life.

 

Life on the run

 

In 1982, Sanchez became involved in an attack on a nuclear reactor in France, but the attempt failed. However, two members of the group were arrested, including Sanchez’ wife, Magdalena Kopp, who was closely connected to the Bader-Meinhof Gang in Germany. In order to intimidate the authorities into freeing the suspects, Sanchez contacted the police, threatening to launch a series of attacks unless the suspects were released. When the authorities refused to give them up, he went on to launch a series of bombings, including one attack on a French passenger train that killed five people and injured dozens more. However, in the long term, Sanchez’ plan failed, and far from releasing the jailed suspects, the authorities brought them to trial, where they were eventually convicted of their crimes. Magdalena Kopp received a sentence of six years’ imprisonment, after which she returned to live with her terrorist husband.

By now, Sanchez’ brutal attacks were becoming legendary, and the radical Arab countries who had previously supported him were beginning to back away from giving him protection. Moreover, the Soviet bloc countries were also removing their support, realising that Sanchez had now become a thug rather than a political activist with any clear plan of action. He was eventually allowed to settle in Syria, but was only tolerated there on condition that his terrorist activities ceased. Political events in the Middle East then caused another twist in the tale, when rumours spread that Saddam Hussein wanted to hire Sanchez to make a terrorist strike on the United States. At this point, Syria exiled Sanchez from the country, and he was forced to move around the Middle East as an underground operative.

It was not long before Sanchez found his way to the Sudan, which had a reputation for harbouring terrorist activists such as Osama bin Laden. In the Sudan, an Islamic sheikh offered him protection, but the relationship did not last long. Sanchez was a Westernized playboy who delighted in gratifying his lusts, and not surprisingly, this openly debauched behaviour caused disapproval from the fundamentalist sheikh, who arranged for him to be handed over to the French police. He was finally arrested in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1994. From there, he was taken to France, where, he was held for three years in solitary confinement. In 1997, he was tried, convicted and given a life sentence. Today, he continues to serve his sentence, all but forgotten as one of the most vicious criminal masterminds of the twentieth century.