Carlos the “Jackal” was controlled by MOSSAD

Krassimir Ivandjiiski /Красимир Иванджийски/

From our archives

First time published in 01, 2012

Quite surprisingly the proceedings against Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, also known as Carlos the Jackal, were resumed in Paris.

Once considered-to-be the terrorist No 1 on the planet was brought to court in France in 1994 on the charge that in the early 1980s had organized four bombings in which 11 people died.

Sánchez was sentenced to life imprisonment, with all the episodes of his terrorist activity on the territory of France being debated during the first trial.

That is why it is difficult to understand why so many years after 1994 the French have again reopened the case against Sánchez and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Maybe they wanted to squeeze something new out of him? Or to hide perhaps? What could that be?

One of the biggest sensations could be that Carlos the Jackal had been on a payroll with the Israeli Mossad and orders for most of his terrorist operations had come exactly from Tel Aviv.

Let us get back to those years.

The future terrorist was born on October 12, 1949, in Caracas Venezuela. His father was the prominent lawyer and a communist José Altagracia Ramírez Navas Sánchez who gave his eldest son the name of Ilich, while his two youngest sons were named Lenin and Vladimir.

In 1964, Ilich joins the youth movement of the Venezuelan Communist Party what does not prevent him to enter one of the most prestigious colleges in Caracas. After his college graduation, Ilich along with his brother, study in London and Paris. His teachers recall that during that period he does not at all took after a revolutionary. He was over-confident, indolent, wore expensive clothing and was more than likely a playboy than a rebel.

In 1968, Ilich arrives in Moscow and enrolls at the Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University in Moscow. In July 1970, he attends a banned protest of Palestinian students at the Libyan embassy in Moscow and is expelled from the university.

However, that is just a pretext. The young revolutionary is not at all a science enthusiast; he enjoys a cheerful way of life and is involved in smuggling.

Ilich later recalled, "At that time, a gold bullion on the black market in Moscow had a price twelve times more in ruble equivalent than in Geneva, and in Tashkent that price has doubled."

It would be a sin not to take advantage of this opportunity. He claimed to raise that money to fight... world imperialism.

From the USSR, Ilich leaves for Palestine. It is not quite clear why he does not return to Latin America to continue Che Guevara's cause.

It is possible that someone of the Palestinian students will have recommended him to a member of the Central Com

mitie the Palestinian National Liberation Front.

In those days, Wadie Haddad organized several airplane hijackings and exchanges of passengers against Palestinians serving time in prisons of Israel.

After a meeting with Haddad, Ilich leaves for London, where he is telling everyone that his cover name is Carlos and that he arrived in England on Haddad's command to carry out a series of terrorist operations. As a protective measure, Scotland Yard's agents searched the home where Carlos lived, found his fake passport, but considered it a fiddle-faddle that did not deserve any attention.

A year after his arrival in London Sánchez makes his first terrorist act as nobody believed him anymore to be a Palestinian terrorist. Sánchez chooses the Chairman of retailer Marks & Spencer Joseph Sieff - a completely harmless man, to be his first victim.

Here is how Sánchez describes this operation himself: “When Lord Sieff went out of the bathtub, I opened fire at him with my old Beretta pistol. He was injured. The bullet bounced off Sieff just between his nose and upper lip. I usually put three bullets under the nose, which means certain death. But then, only one bullet hit him though I fired three times".

Of course, Sieff was not a lord, and Carlos was just raising his price. He shot at one-meter distance and should try hard to hit at least once. Besides, Sieff survived. What kind of a Beretta Sánchez used remained a secret, but British journalists hurried to give him the nickname "Jackal".

A month after the attack on Sieff, Sánchez once again emerged on the front pages of English yellow newspapers, bombing a bank. Early in the morning, while no visitors still came, he opened the door of the bank and threw a primitive device, a Russian-made hand grenade, with 600 grams of plastic explosive attached. Only the grenade exploded. Because of that “terrorist operation”, a window was broken, and one of the clerks got small scratches.

All London newspapers wrote that this terrible terrorist attack was a work of Carlos, as this time he did not longed away but instead run around all the editors to describe them in person his heroism. Journalists enriched the picture telling that only a lucky chance prevented the complete destruction of an entire residential neighborhood.

Then Sánchez decided that in London he was already well known for his heroism and moved to Paris, where he bombed the editorial offices of three French newspapers.

The explosions thundered at 2 o'clock in the morning, so no one got injuries . Moreover, Sánchez himself let journalists know beforehand about the upcoming bombings.

When this came to the knowledge of Wadie Haddad, he persuaded the courageous terrorist to stop to play fool of himself and to hijack an Israeli airliner at Orly airport in Paris and take hostages.

Sánchez did not like this proposal, and instead decided to blow up plane during take-off. On January 13, 1975, an accomplice of Sánchez fired on an Israeli plane a Soviet-made grenade launcher RPG-7. The plane was 130 meters away, so chances of explosion were practically nil. The grenade only managed to hit a car parked nearby and of course, the cumulative charge of the grenade did not explode. Above all, in the fuss that followed, Sánchez and his companion broke the windshield of their own car.

Two weeks later, the might-have-been terrorists tried to repeat their operation, but this time the airport security welcomed them with a heavy gunfire. They had to hide in a toilet, take hostages and fly to Baghdad. However, Sánchez was not among the terrorists. He took to his heels as soon as the firing began.

The European representative of the Palestinian National Liberation Front, Michel Mukarbil began an investigation on the case but was soon killed. His murder was played in the best traditions of Hollywood.

As long as Sánchez can be trusted, Mukarbil, who turned out to be Mossad's agent, met him with three French counterintelligence officers. "I pulled out my Russian-made pistol, Sánchez later told - and shot first at Donatini, who had already taken out his weapon. I knew him to be a great shooter, but I was quicker and drove a bullet in his left temple. Then I shot at Raymond Duos, and finally, I sent a bullet through the ear of the third French. Only Michel remained, and when he came near, I shot him in the forehead and he fell, then I fired once more, this time in his left temple. Then, from the next room, I jumped into the darkness. The whole operation took only six seconds. "

Wadie Haddad, of course, did not believe a single word of the tale, but to proof of his devotion to the Palestinian cause, Sánchez not only converted to Islam but also promised to take hostage the oil ministers of the OPEC countries during their next conference in Vienna.

Haddad agreed with this proposal and ordered him to kill two ministers - Shah Yamani of Saudi Arabia and Jamshid from Iran, while the rest should be exchanged for Palestinians serving time in the prisons of Israel.

Upon his arrival in Austria, Sánchez let his hair, sideburns, and beard grow and put on a black beret to make himself look like Che Guevara. The most interesting thing was that Sánchez lived in Hilton, but sent his comrades to a small rented lodging.

On December 19, 1975, he brought there several sacks of pistols, automated rifles, and explosives. The following day, the terrorists, along with all the bags, entered smoothly the OPEC headquarters and took hostage 11 ministers.

Austria submitted to Sánchez an airplane and the terrorists and hostages took off to Algeria where they disappeared. All the hostages were whole and unharmed. Most probably the terrorists had received a ransom.

Sánchez was pleased. He was a celebrity all over the world. Wadie Haddad, as one might expect, told Sánchez that in Palestine they did not want to have anything to do with him, as they suspected him to have been working long ago for Israeli Mossad. Palestinians managed to figure out there the answers of questions how and why. Concurrently, Haddad began gathering information about the man named Ilich Ramirez Sánchez but in March 1978, he unexpectedly died from leukemia.

Slowly journalists began to lose interest in Sánchez, and he had to take on himself responsibility for operations done not by him but by other terrorists. The Basque terrorist group ETA blew up the Paris-Toulouse train, but Sánchez hurried to announce first that it had been his attack.

In January 1982, Sánchez decided to make the whole world shake with horror and blew out the nuclear facility that was under construction in the center of France. At night, his group fired RPG-7 on the outer shell of the nuclear reactor at Phoenix NPP. However, the grenade launcher left but a tiny scratch on the reinforced concrete designed to withstand attacks of nuke bombs.

How it came that all these years Sánchez escaped capture. The French would have long ago arrested him if it had not been for CIA and Mossad that almost every time had sent them on the wrong track.

Later it became clear that CIA and Mossad knew very well the whereabouts of Sánchez and what he did but they were not in a hurry to share this information with the French.

In an attempted excuse, the CIA anti-terrorist department Chief Vincent Cannistraro said, "Carlos challenged the curiosity only among historians. A Communist whiskey barrel, an unbelieving infidel useless to any Muslim government, he was a sad spectacle, а heavy boozer stuck to the bottle in Damascus”.

The French, however, decided that these failings could not discharge Carlos from responsibility for all crimes he confessed himself, eventually captured “Che Guevara's associate” in Sudan, and sent him directly to the Parisian prison of La Santé.

If Paris resumes proceedings against Sánchez, it may be for several reasons.

It is possible that Sánchez has told who financed his terrorist accomplices and whom he had received instructions from.

In this case, it is best to close his mouth with two life sentences.