C A R L O S
 Illich Ramírez Sánchez (b. 1950), one of the most famous graduates of the Cuban camps, often called "El Chacal", "Carlos the Jackal", "the Jackal", was responsible for much of the success of Palestinian terrorism in Europe. His actions, in Mousset's words, "provides categoric proof of the unity of action of the terrorist groups operating in Europe and elsewhere as well as the close links between the terrorist networks and certain foreign intelligence services."
Carlos is the son of a left-wing Venezuelan millionaire, Jose Altagracia Ramirez Navas. He named his three sons Ilich, Lenin and Vladimir, after the Russian Bolshevik leaderVladimir Illich Lenin, and raised them to be revolutionaries. After moving to London with his mother, Carlos ended up in Moscow, where he attended Patrice Lumumba University, from which "was expelled in 1971 for frivolity". As Patrice Lumumba University was a notorious training ground for KGB spies and terrorists, others maintain that he was really recruited as a KGB agent and that the expulsion was faked in order to maintain his cover.
At the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow where Carlos met Mohammed Boudia, the top man for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in Europe. The PFLP is one of the terrorist organizations within the PLO, and the organization with which Carlos was to be most closely associated. Using the nom de guerre "Carlos," Sánchez went to Paris where he took command of a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine cell in the early 1970s. Sánchez is believed to have made an assassination attempt on 31 December 1973 against Marks and Spenser magnate Teddy Zieff who was wounded but not killed due to a malfunction of the gun. Sánchez was implicated in terrorist bombings of three pro-Israeli newspapers and authorities say he fired shoulder-launched missiles at at a Paris Orly airport in 1975, in attempt to destroy an Israeli El Al airline jet. As a young man, Illich Ramírez Sánchez was involved with Venezuelan guerrilla groups, and he attended the Tri-Continental Conference in Havana in 1966. He later returned to Cuba where he trained in one of the camps studying urban guerrilla tactics, automatic arms, plastic explosives, sabotage, map-making and reading, photography, forgery and disguise.
Carlos went to Jordan in 1970 and fought with PLO guerrillas against the Jordanian Army in what became known as the "Black September" operation. It was so called because King Hussein, angered by the use of Jordan as a base for Palestinian terrorism, ordered an all-out military assault against the PLO and expelled tham after heavy fighting during which hundreds of Palestinians died and thousands more fled, some to Israel. Carlos later referred to this battle as a "useful guerrilla experience."
Black September inspired the formation of a new terrorist group known by that name which was responsible for, among other atrocities, the Munich Massacres. Carlos was behind the hostage taking at the 1972 Munich Olympics that ended in the massacre of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes, After the events of Black Septe
produced to link him to an atrocity, it was often blamed on him, out of convenience or ineptitude. But, regardless of embellishments, the reality of "Carlos" was described by a Saudi Arabian Oil Minister, who had been kidnapped during the 1975 OPEC takeover. "Carlos...is a ruthless terrorist who operates with cold-blooded, surgical precision," according to Ahmed Zaki Yamani. Lauded by some as a "professional killer" with 'cool, deliberate actions", he also has been described by others as a "bumbling psychotic who shoots people in the face, and is extremely lucky." Whether luck, or ruthless brutality, "Carlos" has reveled in the limelight of his deadly performance.
Although the attackers called themselves "the Arab Revolution", the group consisted largely of German members of the Red Army Faction (q.v.) and the Venezuelan Carlos. The terrorists demanded $5 million in ransom and may have received as much as $50 million from Iran and Saudi Arabia. After 36 hours of negotiations, the Austrian government allowed the terrorists and 42 of their hostages to leave Austria on a DC-9 that landed first in Algeria, where a wounded West German terrorist was taken off the plane, then to Libya where their ransom money was off-loaded and transferred to a South Yemenese bank, and then back to Algeria where the terrorists surrendered and the hostages were released. Apparently the motive of the terrorists was primarily extortion.
Libya allowed them to unload their ransoms in Libya and later permitting them sanctuary there. Qaddafi's involvement with sponsorship of terrorist groups began in the same period with aid to Black September (q.v.) in its attack on the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum on 1 March 1973 and in its attack on Athens airport on 5 August 1973.
Muammar Qaddafi (b. 1941), leader of the coup d'état that overthrew King Idris of Libya on 1 September 1969, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi has been the president of the Libyan Arab Republic, also called by Qaddafi the Libyan People's Arab Socialist Jamahariyyah. Qaddafi is of Bedouin extraction and is a devout Muslim. As a youth he greatly admired Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser and so Qaddafi's pronounced anti-Western sentiments appear to spring from his ardent Pan-Arabism and hatred of Israel. Accordingly he ordered the U.S. military forces out of Libya in 1970, ancelled the British-Libyan military accord in 1972, nationalized U.S. oil companies holdings in Libya, and played an instrumental role within OPEC in raising producer oil prices.
In 1975, Qaddafi broke off relations with the PLO and began to back the renegade Fatah Revolutionary Council led by Abu Nidal (q.v.). Consequently Qaddafi is suspected of complicity in the December 1985 hijacking of an Egyptair airline to Luqua airport in Malta and the massacre of holiday travelers at Rome and Vienna airports on 27 December 1985.
Qaddafi clashed with the United States over the question of Libyan claims to sovereignty over the Gulf of Sidra. U.S. naval exercises in those waters led to clashes between Libyan and U.S. forces in March 1986. The United States held Libya responsible for the 5 April 1986 bombing of the La Belle discotheque in West Berlin, a favorite nightclub of U.S. servicemen. In retaliation, the U.S. Air Force conducted bombing raids on Benghazi and Tripoli, striking one of Qaddafi's residences and apparently killing one of his foster children. Qaddafi became uncharacteristically reticent after this incident. This did not portend any renunciation of terrorism, however. On 14 April 1988, the "Jihad Brigades," a unit of the Japanese Red Army acting under Libyan sponsorship, carried out a retaliatory bombing against a USO club in Naples, killing five patrons. On 14 November 1991, the United States
Carlos' activities in England and a Cuban diplomat was recalled. (The Economist, "Foreign Report," published by The Economist, (London) #1526, March 8, 1978 & March 15, 1978. )
Carlos was the best-known of the terrorists trained in Cuba, but there were many others. Much the same training has been given to hundreds of Palestinians sent to Cuba during the 1970's, a fact acknowledged by one of Arafat's closest aides, Abu Iyad, in 1978. (Reuters, May 30, 1978).
As Claire Sterling says, "The Palestinians, soon to become a second great magnetic pole for apprentice terrorists, began sending their own apprentices to Cuba in 1966: Cuban instructors have taught in Middle East feyadden camps since the early seventies." (Claire Sterling, op. cit, page 15. )
"By 1976," The Chicago Tribune reported, "the CIA estimated there were 300 Palestinians in Cuban camps." (John Maclean, "Cuba sparks Latin terror," The Chicago Tribune, June 18, 1981.) Among the documents captured by the Israeli armed forces in southern Lebanon in 1982 was a letter written by one of the Palestinians being trained in Cuba to a friend back in Lebanon. The letter, which is printed in the appendix, says, "As for the General Union of Palestinian Students, the Fatah is trying to thwart its activities. The El-Heriya (a periodical) reaches us regularly. Why are shelters not being built in Damur? How are the relations with the El Amal Organizations after the recent exchange of fire with them? How is the arming process prgressing?" (Raphael Israeli, op. cit., page 144.) It is simply the thoughts of one friend to another, but it does provide an insight into the factional and military lives of members of the PLO - whether in Lebanon or Cuba.
On 27 June 1976 Air France flight 139 from Tel Aviv to Paris, carrying 245 passengers and 12 crew members, was hijacked out of Athens by seven members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (q.v.) to Benghazi, Libya, where the plane was refueled. From there it flew to Entebbe Airport, Uganda, where the hijackers were aided by Ugandan troops in guarding the hostages. The hijackers demanded the release of 53 terrorists held in French, Israeli, Kenyan, Swiss, and West German jails, including Kozo Okamoto, sole surviving terrorist involved in the May 1972 Lod airport attack. Three of the terrorists were non-Arabs believed to be associates of Ilyich Ramírez Sánchez, known as "Carlos." Throughout the hostage seizure the Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, fully supported the terrorists.
By 1 July 1976, the terrorists had released nearly all non-Jewish and non-Israeli hostages, leaving 103 at Entebbe. On 2 July the Israeli cabinet decided upon Operation Thunderbolt, a plan to send Israeli commandos to Entebbe to rescue the hostages. On 4 July 1976, the Israelis rescued all but four of the hostages, three having been killed by the cross fire at the rescue scene, while another passenger, Dora Bloch, age seventy-five, was absent having been hospitalized in Kampala. The rescuers killed 7 of the terrorists and about 20 Ugandan soldiers, while the Israeli officer leading the rescue, Jonathan Netanyahu, was the only Israeli soldier killed in the attack. The Israelis destroyed 11 Ugandan air force MIGs to prevent any attempt to interfere with the rescue mission on its return to Israel.
Following the rescue Dora Bloch was reportedly murdered and her body burned, while Idi Amin carried out a widespread purge and executions of Ugandan officials charged with guarding Entebbe airport and the hostages.
In 1983 a group calling itself the Organization for the Armed Arab Struggle (The OAAS) surfaced reportedly under Sánchez's leadership and accordingly known also as the "Carlos Apparat." While the group generally carries out actio
from 11 to 20 years of their sentences.
Although German officials say the RAF has largely disintegrated, they worry about successor organizations that have assumed the RAF's ideological mantle. The emerging Anti-Imperialist Cells (AIZ), for example, mounted several bombing attacks against German interests in 1995. Among far-right groups, German authorities noted an increasing tendency to link up with neo-Nazi groups abroad, especially through the use of electronic communication networks.
In the culmination of what journalists said was a two-year investigation, Milan police arrested 11 persons on 26 June at Milan's Islamic Center and made additional arrests a few days later. Police officials told the press that the group provided support for an international network of Islamic terrorist organizations, including the Egyptian al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group or IG). A police spokesman also said the arrestees maintained contact with the "Blind Shaykh," Umar Abd al-Rahman, who was convicted in October for conspiring to commit terrorism in the United States. Charges against the accused include conspiracy, extortion, armed robbery, falsifying documents, and arms smuggling.
 A disguises and known to have obtained any number of false identities, complete with passports and credit cards, Carlos was arrested on 15. August 1994 few hours after a harmless operation at the abdomen in a hospital in Karthum where he was hospitalized under the name Ali Barakat. He just fell asleep when several men broke in his room, pull him brutally from the bed, pull to him a mask over the heading and push him into a kleinlaster. In racing travel it goes then from the elegant suburb Taif of the Sudanese capital Karthum to the airport. There a French private jet waits on a Nebenpiste with engines on. Illich Ramírez Sánchez, alias "El Chacal", alias "Carlos the Jackal", alias "the Jackal", alias Ali Bakarat was brought in the plane in a jute bag.
A few hours later, French Minister of the Interior Charles Pasqua announced that a professional hitman and international terrorist Illich Ramírez Sánchez that is hunted for 19 years by the French secret service, was finaly arrested. "The list of the acts of terrorism, which he committed or however prepared, is impressing. "
Since that 15 August 1994 the Top terrorist sits in a cell - for safety reasons sometimes in the middle in Paris Santé prisons, sometimes in addition, in the suburb prison Fresnes - and enjoys since the status of a luxury prisoner. He smokes heavy Havannas, had even his own cigar cutter (which is strictly forbidden normally in a prison) and over his lawyers 30 daily and weekly papers subscribed. If he finds something, which does not please him in an article, the journalist receives protest letters from the prison cell.
On the basis of a French warrant, Italian police arrested former Red Army Faction member Margo Froehlich in October 1995. A German national, she was wanted for complicity in a Paris attack in 1982 carried out by international terrorist Illych Ramirez Sanchez (Carlos) that killed one person and injured 63.
Acording to Clark Staten, a veteran emergency services manager, the author of "The Emergency Response Guide to Terrorism" and the Executive Director of the Emergency Response & Research Institute, an emergency service 'think tank', based in Chicago, IL, the end of the "Cold War" and the collapse of the U.S.S.R., may have placed Carlos in a situation with few sponsors, and little ideological motivation to continue his terror campaign. |