A well-known "revolutionary terrorist" who carried out in the 1970s-1980s dozens of significant terrorist military operations against Arab citizens of Israel, Western Europe and America in the interests of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Red Brigades, the Colombian organization M-19, the Red Army Faction, the Basque terrorist organization ETA, the Palestine Liberation Organization PLO, etc.
Collaborated with Muammar Gaddafi, Hafiz Assad, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro. He has been on several "business trips" to Prague, Budapest and Berlin, where he was received by the state security officials of these countries. On account of Carlos the Jackal life of at least 80 people.
In the history of world terrorism, Carlos Jackal is a legendary person without exaggeration. But his gloomy fame largely rests on myths that were created by the excessively exuberant imagination of newspaper people and have nothing to do with reality.
For example, he was suspected of being trained in the Mantanzas political camp in Cuba in 1966, under the care of Fidel Castro's secret service and the local head of the KGB, General V. Semenov; there the terrorist allegedly met the Colombian priest Camillo Torres, one of the leaders of the rebels and a close friend of Che Guevara. But Semyonov began to be responsible for the KGB operations in Havana only in 1968, and Torres died in Colombia at the beginning of 1966 and Carlos will be able to get to know this remarkable person only in the next world, not otherwise.
And in general, if there is a lot of quite weighty evidence of the connection of this international terrorist with the intelligence services of the GDR, Romania and Hungary, then even the most meticulous "sharks of the pen" could not find evidence that Carlos collaborated with the KGB. To blame Jackal for the murder of Israeli athletes in Munich, the murder of Anastasio Somoza and the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran did not work either, although, apparently, he really wanted to. Nevertheless, the fate of the person known by the nickname Carlos the Jackal, in itself, will be able to compose a plot for a detective. Moreover, he tried to do so in order to turn his autobiography into a myth. So who was he really?
The real name of the terrorist is Sanchez Ilyich Ramirez. He was born in 1949 in Venezuela, in a wealthy family. The boy's father, lawyer Jose Altagracia Ramirez Navas Sanchez, was, to put it mildly, a great original. The leftist lawyer named his three sons more than strange: Vladimir, Ilyich and Lenin. Perhaps, in this case, only the eldest son was lucky, which cannot be said about his younger brothers. In addition, the lawyer dreamed of three (at least!) Grandchildren with equally "original" names - Joseph, Vissarionovich and Stalin. Yes, but it looks like it was already a clinic.
It just so happened that Altagrasia paid very little attention to Ilyich Altagrasia, Vladimir was the favorite of his mother, Lenin - his father, and the middle son was, in fact, not interesting and needed by anyone. In Lenin, the lawyer saw the future great fighter for freedom and independence; Ilyich, on the other hand, had a chance all his life to prove to an enthusiastic parent that he was no worse than his younger brother.
At the age of 14, an unbalanced and hot-tempered teenager joined the Union of Communist Youth of Venezuela, which was either banned or half-banned at that time. A little later, Ilyich, along with his mother and Lenin, left for England, where he was to study at Stafford Teachers College in Kensington. Both teachers and students did not perceive the young man very well - always an impeccably and expensively dressed inveterate lazy person, lying on any occasion and without it, a narcissistic egoist who believes that he is a "gift" for everyone.
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1967 was drawing to a close when Altagracia came to England. He only appeared to take Ilyich and Lenin to Paris. The lawyer wanted to find a place for the offspring at the Sorbonne, but in the spring of the next year he had to hastily and radically change his plans. This is because serious student unrest broke out in France, and Navas had the opportunity, through the cultural attaché of the Soviet Embassy in London, to procure places for the offspring at the Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University. By the way, the "correct" names of the guys played an important role in this. After studying for two months at the preparatory courses, on September 1, 1968, Ilyich was enrolled in the physics and mathematics faculty.
In general, then everything went as in a fairy tale: the father had three sons, two smart ones, and the third one somehow obviously did not work out. At least, the university bosses had more problems with Ilyich than with the entire course combined. The Venezuelan did not know what financial difficulties were, because his parents supplied him with money in abundance. At the same time, the lawyer's son did not particularly strive to gain at least some knowledge; at lectures he was seen quite rarely, but he constantly flickered in the company of some girl. In addition, the Venezuelan almost did not dry out from alcohol, and therefore, since he was not sober and did not differ in gentleness of character and exemplary behavior, "under the degree" all the unpleasant aspects of his character became even worse.
One night, the dormitory attendants wanted to calm down Ilyich, who had raised the noise to the entire floor. There were many bottles in the Venezuelan's room - both with "fuel" and empty, and glasses; then a naked girl, drunk as an insole, fell out of the closet. Of course there was a scandal. But Ilyich spat on him, limiting himself to the introduction of one innovation: in crisis situations, he no longer hid the girls, but threw them out of the window from the second floor. Fortunately, it took place in winter, and an impressive snowdrift was constantly rising under it.
Naturally, one of the leaders of the Venezuelan Communist Party, Gustavo Mochado, was, to put it mildly, slightly disappointed with the results of the meeting with his compatriot Studios; the rector of the university did not miss the opportunity to "drip" on to him an uncontrollable student (he just managed to "splinter" one more number: he was photographed drunk as a lord in a Russian national costume and with a balalaika). But Mochado could not influence Ilyich either. He did not stop living for his own pleasure and did not respond to calls to become more prudent.
When, in March 1969, the out-of-reach student, along with his younger brother, decided to take part in a rally of Arab students in front of the Iranian embassy, he had no idea how drastically his fate would change. The brothers behaved aggressively, ended up in the police, after which the university authorities, who had been grinding their teeth on them for a long time, simply expelled them among the other 20 Venezuelan students, whose academic performance was found to be unsatisfactory and whose behavior left much to be desired.
In the same place, in Moscow, Ilyich became his own among the Palestinians. They just told the guy about Wadi Haddad, one of the leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Later, the terrorist will call this person the Teacher. Somehow friends invited Ilyich to a meeting with the emissary of the Popular Front Rifat Abul Aun. He invited the Venezuelan to visit a Palestinian military training camp in Jordan. So the young man did not worry about the early farewell to the alma mater, instead he went to the Middle East.
Ilyich liked it in the camp, and he agreed to an offer of cooperation from the head of the recruitment department of the Popular Front, Abu Sharif. Then a young promising fighter named Carlos appeared in the arena.
When training in the camp ended, the Venezuelan already had a good dossier. So, for example, he turned out to be the only foreigner who risked during the "black September" to fight on the side of the Palestinians in Jordan. After that, the leadership of the Popular Front decided that the guy was quite ripe for responsible revolutionary activity, and sent him to Europe.
The terrorist's bloody path began in London, where Carlos made an attempt on the life of a prominent Jewish activist Edward Sieff (the victim managed to survive only by a miracle). This was followed by "work" in Paris: there the Venezuelan organized a series of explosions in the offices of several central newspapers, prepared the seizure of the French embassy in The Hague, fired a bazooka at the plane of the Israeli airline "ElAl" at Orly airport, threw a grenade at the window of a pharmacy located next to an old church Saint Germain, planted a bomb on a Swiss plane heading from Zurich to Tel Aviv, etc. Ahead of the “revolutionary” was no less “productive tours” in other countries. Soon, the intelligence services of at least five powers were already looking for him for terrorist acts.
"Terrorist No. 1" at that time was supported by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was considered a professional revolutionary and believed that his actions were part of a great war. Carlos "lit up" only at the end of June 1975: Western intelligence services first received incriminating materials on him, and with the light hand of the London Guardian reporter, the nickname Jackal stuck to the terrorist. Then the Venezuelan, in front of witnesses, shot and killed two agents of the French counterintelligence and a Lebanese informant who was with them. The latter, who passed orders from Haddad to Carlos, as it turned out, worked for several special services at once.
That period was the most "fruitful" for Carlos Jackal. It is not worth talking about small actions carried out by the “revolutionary” and his group at all due to their large number. But the major terrorist acts carried out by Carlos - the kidnapping in Vienna of 10 oil ministers of the OPEC countries (the organization of oil exporting countries), the explosion of the Paris-Toulouse high-speed train, the explosion of the railway station in Marseille, the explosion of the Munich branch of Radio Free Europe, the terrorist attack at the Israeli Lod airport, the missile attack of the plane at the Paris airport - the world will remember for a long time.
Thus, the "revolutionary", under whose leadership was a gang of thugs, became "richer" by 24 murders. In addition, Carlos Jackal and his group are responsible for inflicting severe injuries and mutilations on 257 persons. Impressive, isn't it? And this despite the fact that the Venezuelan said that he was not a professional killer; you see, it is "very difficult" for him to shoot a man who looks into his eyes.
Finally, the Jackal's "career" ended. This happened during the celebration of the new year (1994), in the Sudanese capital Khartoum. Having pretty much typed in one of the local Greek eateries in the company of friends, the Jackal "added" to the already threatening dose of alcohol another bottle, which he drank in the fresh air. Then the terrorist was drawn to exploits, and he began to shoot in the air with a pistol. Nobody began to contact drunken dark personalities armed not only with pistols, but also with Uzi machine guns.
But the company attracted the interest of the authorities, who began to verify the identity of the unknown shooter. The terrorist's documents were in perfect order. He was listed as Abdullah Barakat, an Arab businessman of Lebanese origin who was involved in the supply of oil to Sudan. However, the police began to wiretap the suspicious businessman's phone. It soon became clear that the "Arab" often calls Venezuela. For some reason, he spoke excellently in Spanish, while in Arabic he spoke with a pronounced accent.
To this day, it is not known how the French secret services got wind of the fact that Carlos Jackal was "figured out" by their Sudanese colleagues. But they immediately began to demand the extradition of the terrorist; in August of the same year, Judge Brueger issued an international arrest warrant for Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez. He was just in the hospital for an operation for varicose veins in the groin, so it was not difficult to detain the Jackal. It's just that the doctor, once again giving injections to the operated patient, injected him with a hefty dose of a sedative.
The terrorist fell asleep like a baby and came to his senses only on the plane. The moment of awakening was not very pleasant for him: fearing to lose "valuable cargo", the special services literally swaddled the terrorist hand and foot, and then, to be sure, shoved him into a jute sack. Only the head remained free for Carlos the Jackal.
Western intelligence agencies have long understood that the greatest nightmare for a terrorist is the loss of the halo of a martyr and a revolutionary who suffers for his beliefs. Therefore, Jackal was charged with the murder of two French counterintelligence agents and a Lebanese informant, that is, he should have been tried under a criminal article for premeditated murder. And no high pathos.
The trial of "terrorist # 1" began on December 12, 1997. The security measures taken by the police were unprecedented; even each of the jurors was assigned two bodyguards during the trial! The terrorist behaved defiantly and at the same time lordly. When asked about his profession, he replied that he was “a professional revolutionary of the old Leninist school” and that he, as a revolutionary internationalist, owns the whole world. Then Carlos Jackal said: he became a victim of an international conspiracy, the purpose of which is to destroy the revolutionary who gave his whole life to the noble cause of the liberation of Palestine within the framework of the world revolution.
However, the French Themis had their own views on the activities of the terrorist. December 23, 1997 after 3 hours 48 minutes. meeting jury members sentenced him to life imprisonment. The death penalty, which shone on the terrorist for all his "heroism", was abolished in France a year earlier. So Sanchez Ilyich Ramirez, aka Carlos Jackal, turned into prisoner no. 872686 / X, held under heavy guard in a solitary confinement cell of the strictest French prison, Le San.
At his leisure, an international terrorist studies philosophy. In addition, he is going to marry his own lawyer, Frenchwoman Isabelle Coutan-Pierre. The latter has already started a divorce from her husband. As for the Jackal, he does not need to turn to a judge: in accordance with his faith, he can have four wives, and the terrorist has only two of them left. It is curious that in the homeland of Carlos, in Venezuela, he is not considered a terrorist, because according to the laws of this country, a person who has not committed a crime on its territory is not a terrorist.
V. Sklyarenko