Carlos the Jackal: Unmasking the Legend of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the Notorious Revolutionary

“I am Professional Revolutionist! I am Ilich Ramirez Sanchez a.k.a. Carlos the Jackal and my sphere of influence encompasses the entirety of the planet!”

Many members of the police force and members of the general public recognise Ramirez as a contract killer who participated in the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, attempted to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle, and carried out an attack on OPEC in Vienna in 1975.

According to the findings of security specialists, Carlos was a “revolutionary fighter” for both the Palestinian Liberation Movement and the Soviet camp.

Both of these groups received financial support from Arabs and Russians.

He continued to fight until the fall of communism in 1989.

On August 14, 1994, he was taken into custody by agents of the French intelligence service in the city of Khartoum.

Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez, who was 62 years old at the time, made a brazen proclamation when the trial of the most famous terrorist of the twentieth century began in Paris’s special anti-terrorist court. He said:

“I have years of experience as a revolutionary! My sphere of influence encompasses the entirety of the planet!”

Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez was once a playboy, mercenary, and “professional revolutionary” in addition to being a former militant.

His nom de guerre during the conflict was Carlos, and his journalistic pseudonym was Jackal.
Carlos the Jackal is another of his nicknames.

The 12th of October, 1949 found Ramirez Sanchez being born in the city of Caracas, Venezuela.

Ilyich Lenin was the name given to him by his Marxist lawyer father.

In 1959, when Ramirez was still in school, he became a member of the National Communist Party’s youth wing.

Following the separation of his parents in 1966, his mother relocated him and his brother to London so that they may complete their education there.

In 1968, their father made an application for his kids to attend the Sorbonne, but ultimately decided to send them to Patrice Lumumba’s institution in Moscow instead.

In 1970, Ramirez was kicked out of the institution for his disruptive behaviour.

As a language aficionado, Ramirez is fluent in other tongues in addition to his mother tongue of Spanish, including Arabic, Russian, English, and French.

Following his departure from Moscow, he made his way to Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon, in order to become a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Around the middle of the 1970s, he was moved to a PFLP foreign volunteer training camp on the outskirts of Amman in the country of Jordan.

Because of this, people started calling him Carlos.

During an expulsion operation that was conducted by the Jordanian government in 1970, he fought alongside the NFOP against the Jordanian army in Jordan. This campaign was against the Jordanian army.

It would appear that after his time in Jordan, he made his way back to London, where he was employed by the NFOP and attended the London School of Economics.

A journalist gave Karolos the nickname “The Jackal” after finding Frederick Forsyth’s novel “Days of the Jackal” among his things. Karolos was the subject of the story.

Despite the fact that the book was actually someone else’s property, the nickname continued to be used.

In 1973, Carlos participated in his first NFOP operation, which involved an attempt to murder Jewish merchant Joseph Siff.

It was planned to be an act of vengeance for the murder of Mohammed Boudi, the director of the Paris theatre who was believed to have been working with the NFOP and was killed by the Mossad because of this suspicion.

Ramirez also claimed responsibility for an unsuccessful bombing attempt against the premises of the Hapoalim Bank in London, as well as three attempts to detonate vehicle bombs at offices of pro-Israeli French newspapers.

He also asserts that he was responsible for the grenade attack on a restaurant in Paris, which resulted in the deaths of two people and injuries to thirty more.

Later, on January 13 and 17, 1975, he took part in two unsuccessful rocket attacks against El Al flights at the Orly Airport in Paris. These attacks were launched from Paris.

During a party that was being held in a house in Paris, three police officers attempted to arrest Carlos. Carlos shot and murdered two of the officers before fleeing the scene and making his way to Beirut via Brussels.

In December of 1975, he was the leader of a six-man group that carried out an assault on a meeting of OPEC and kidnapped sixty individuals.

On December 22, the terrorists were provided with an aeroplane and transported to Algeria, where they were responsible for the release of thirty hostages.

After that, the terrorists and the other hostages were transported by helicopter to Libya, where some of them were eventually set free.

Following the plane’s landing in Algeria, the remaining hostages were freed, and the hijackers were granted refuge for their political activities.

In spite of the fact that Ramirez led the life of a playboy and a communist James Bond, he was more elusive than Osama bin Laden. Ramirez lived extravagantly and stayed in the costliest hotels in the world.

He was known as a master of fleeing the scene of a crime, disguising himself, and using fictitious identities, and he got active logistical aid from agents of communist bloc countries located all over the world.

September of 1976 was the month in question.

In Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Carlos was held for questioning for a short period of time.

In 1975, the well-known terrorist was being interrogated in Belgrade, and during that time he talked openly the operations of Palestinian bases in Serbia and Belgrade.

With Tito’s blessing, the PLO constructed training bases in Avala, which is located close to Belgrade, and Jastrebac, which is located close to Kruevac.

Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez was the one who led the class.

Carlos was employed by both the former East German Stasi and the Yugoslav State Security Service throughout his time in the intelligence community.

Because of his close relationship with the PLO and Yasser Arafat, he was Tito’s personal favourite.

During the 1970s, non-aligned Yugoslavia provided support for liberation movements in Africa and the Middle East, and Carlos was involved in some capacity with these movements.

On the other hand, Carlos was swiftly freed and taken to Iraq under the guise of an employee of a Yugoslav construction business, in accordance with the directives of the highest authority.

The anti-terrorist policy of the SFRY can be described as “non-aligned,” which means that the country does not take sides in the wars that are raging between the Western and Eastern blocs.

Allegedly, the German secret police known as the BND wanted Carlos to be captured in Belgrade so that Tito’s Yugoslavia could be publicly presented as a protector of international terrorists. As a result, they provided intelligence regarding Jackal’s movements to the security services of the SFRY.

According to archives from the former State Security Service of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), Carlos returned to Yugoslavia following Tito’s death in 1982 with lofty goals in mind.

After then, according to the allegations, his terrorist organisation made the decision to set up a permanent base in the SFRY in order to make operations in Western Europe easier.

It is believed that Carlos was in Belgrade at the time, posing as the Syrian ambassador, Mike Haddad. The security authorities of the former state were supposedly unaware that the most wanted terrorist in the world was on their territory.

At the end of the 1970s, they were responsible for the dissolution of their very own terrorist organisation, which was known as the Organization of Arab Armed Struggle and was composed of rebels from Syria, Lebanon, and Germany.

Additionally, he was in contact with the East German intelligence agency known as the Stasi.

Even the Romanian secret service hired him to kill Romanian dissidents in France and to take down the offices of Radio Free Europe in Munich. He was successful in both of those endeavours.

After Haddad passed away, Carlos once more offered his assistance to the NFOP on a voluntary basis, but this time with the assistance of the Baghdad administration.

The terrorist organisation led by Carlos didn’t get off the ground until 1982, when they attempted but failed to take over a nuclear power station.

In retaliation for the arrest of two members of the organisation in Paris, including Carlos Kopp’s wife, Magdalena Kopp, the gang carried out other bombings across France.

Throughout his career, Western sources asserted that Carlos was a KGB spy, despite the fact that his connections to Russian intelligence were quite insignificant.

As a consequence of these attacks, pressure from the international community was exerted on the governments of European countries, which allowed Carlos’ activities to continue.

At the end of 1985, he fled Hungary, but Iraq, Libya, and Cuba all refused to provide him with assistance. Finally, he was able to find sanctuary in Syria.

Damascus became the new home for him, his wife, and their daughter.

After being ordered by the Syrian government to cease his involvement in terrorist operations, Carlos was removed from the list of individuals regarded as a risk.

Despite this, the Iraqi government sent an appeal to him in the year 1990. As a result, he was expelled from Syria in September 1991 and resettled for a short time in Jordan.

He moved his base of operations to Khartoum, Sudan, because the security there was superior.

The French and American intelligence services have presented the Sudanese government with an advantageous proposition in exchange for Carlos’s extradition.

This settlement was most likely awarded because Sudanese Islamic fundamentalists were annoyed by Carlos’s continuous behaviour as a playboy despite his religious beliefs prohibiting such behaviour.

On the 14th of August, 1994, he was turned over to the police in France and transported to Paris.

In 1975, he was arrested in Paris and accused of the killings of two police officers as well as Michel Mukarbal. Following his arrest, he was transported to the La Sante de Paris jail, where he remained until the beginning of the trial.

The proceedings of the trial began on December 12, 1997, and lasted until December 23, 1997, when he was found guilty and given a life term in jail.

This post was written by Mario Bekes