This Day in History: Notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal sedated and captured after his reign of terror
Today is August 14 and it marks the 26th anniversary of the capture of Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez, a notorious terrorist more popularly known as Carlos the Jackal, in Khartoum, Sudan. French intelligence agents got hold of the man on this day in 1994 and they sedated and kidnapped him since there was no extradition treaty between France and Sudan. The government of Sudan later urged the US to remove the African nation’s name from its list of terrorism-sponsoring countries claiming that it helped in the arrest of Carlos. The man was widely accused of being responsible for several terrorist attacks across Europe between 1973 and 1992. He was wanted for terrorist crimes in at least five European countries.
Who is Carlos the Jackal?
Ramírez was born into an upper-class family in the town of Michelena in Venezuela, on October 12, 1949. His father José Altagracia Ramírez Navas was a committed Marxist who did legal practice. His father gave his first name Ilyich after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (his two other siblings were named 'Lenin' and 'Vladimir'). Ramírez received education in communism and revolutionary thought from his father. His mother Elba María Sánchez was a socialite with whom Ramírez traveled extensively and got used to a lavish lifestyle which was at odds with his communist beliefs.
After a stint with education in Britain, Ramírez went to Moscow’s Patrice Lumumba University which was alleged to be a hotbed for recruiting foreign communists to the erstwhile Soviet Union. But Ramirez’s less-than-impressive academic performance and problems with the university authorities saw his expulsion in 1970. From Moscow, Ramirez went to Beirut where he volunteered for the PFLP -- Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. There, he was given the nom de guerre ‘Carlos’ and went to Jordan for arms training. After PFLP was driven out from Jordan in 1970-71, Carlos went to London where he got a list of names of people who were to be either kidnapped or assassinated. This led to Carlos’s maiden mission -- the killing of Joseph Sieff -- president of Marks & Spencer and one of Britain’s well-known Jewish businessmen. In December 1973, Carlos forcefully entered Sieff’s home in London and shot him but could not finish off his task. His gun got jammed and Carlos fled the scene.
Carlos’s next mission was helping in the planning of the occupation of the French embassy in The Hague, Netherlands, by members of the Japanese Red Army in September 1974. He lobbed a grenade into a cafe and shopping arcade in Paris as the French were in talks for the release of 11 hostages held at the diplomatic mission, killing two and injuring several. The French agreed to the Japanese Red Army’s demands within days of this incident.
In January 1975, Carlos was leading another attack mission, this time on one of Israel’s El Al airliner at Paris’s Orly Airport. Another rocket attack a week later saw Carlos getting involved in a shootout with the French police but he managed to escape.
Carlos welcomed cops in his apartment, gave them drinks and then fired
In June the same year, Michel Moukharbal, Carlos’s PFLP handler and Al El attack co-planner, was arrested by the French police and he escorted them to the apartment in Paris where Carlos was staying. The man welcomed the police to his apartment, offered them drinks and then started firing, killing Moukharbal and two other police agents. Another was seriously injured. After this incident, Carlos became a famous name and the cops kept on hunting for him for nearly two decades. He was soon given the name of ‘Carlos the Jackal’ by the media.
Carlos’s next mission was even more chilling. On December 21, 1975, the man along with five others stormed a meeting of OPEC ministers in Vienna, Austria and it resulted in the death of two security guards and a Libyan economist. More than 60 people were taken hostage and Carlos and his men then took 42 of them to Algiers where the local leadership welcomed them. It was revealed later that Carlos got a ransom of millions of dollars for the safe release of the hostages. This irked the PFLP which had sought the execution of two OPEC ministers. Carlos was expelled from the outfit in 1976.
Thereafter, Carlos got support from various individuals and groups, including late Libyan dictator Muammar al- Qaddafi and the Stasi, the secret police agency of the erstwhile communist East Germany which provided him with a Berlin-based headquarters and support staff of more than 70 people. Carlos then set up a terror network called Organization of the Armed Arab Struggle (OAAS) in 1978. Next year, he married Magdelena Kopp, a member of the OAAS from West Germany and she was arrested in 1982 by the French police. This saw serious reprisals as France witnessed a series of deadly terror attacks that year, including one which targeted Jacques Chiraq, the former French president who was then the mayor of the French capital. The attacks persisted in 1983 but many of Carlos’s connections in the communist bloc started drifting away from him under pressure from the western countries. Carlos later married a Palestinian woman called Lana Jarrar and then got engaged to a French lawyer named Isabelle Coutant-Peyre.
Carlos got three life imprisonments
Carlos thereafter lost much of his sting and spent the remaining part of the 1980s in retirement in Syria. In 1990, speculation was rife that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was trying to recruit Carlos to lead a terror campaign against American and European targets. The manhunt resumed and Carlos was finally traced in Sudan where he was captured and taken to France for trial. In December 1997, Carlos was convicted of the murders of Moukharbal and two other detectives and was handed a life term.
In June 2003, Carlos published a book called ‘Revolutionary Islam’ in which he praised 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. Four years later, he won an appeal of a 5,000 Euro fine which was levied against him over his remarks made in a 2004 documentary. He was originally found guilty of defending terrorism by commenting: “In a legal war, we are authorized to take life if necessary.” The Appeals Court later said that his remark was taken out of context. In May 2007, a French anti-terror judge asked Carlos to undergo trial for the bombings in France in 1982-83. The trial for the attacks that killed 11 and injured more than 100 started in Paris in June 2011. In December the same year, Carlos got his second life prison after being found guilty.
In June 2013, a French appeals court upheld Carlos’s second life sentence. Next year, it was announced that the convict will stand yet another trial for the 1974 grenade attack in Paris that killed two and wounded 34. In March 2017, Carlos got his third life imprisonment for the attack and in March 2018, the verdict was upheld again by a French appeals court.
Carlos the Jackal found mention in many films made in various languages.