Current Terrorist and Other Political Operations - Ilich Ramirez Sanchez aka Carlos the Jackal - Essay Example

Ilich Ramirez Sanchez aka Carlos the Jackal Introduction Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (more famously known as Carlos the Jackal) was born in October 1949 inCaracas, Venezuela. He was named Ilich by his militant Marxist father after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Hamm, 2007)⁠. At the age of 19, Sanchez was enrolled in Patrice Lumumba University, Moscow, which was a training ground for the Soviet KGB. He was taught the arts of espionage and guerilla warfare. In 1966, Sanchez attended the Tricontinental Conference in Havana, Cuba. While in Cuba, he was trained in urban guerilla tactics, usage of automatic weapons, explosives and sabotage (Pons, 2001)⁠. In 1970, Sanchez traveled to a guerilla training camp run by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Amman, Jordan. This would form the basis of much of Sanchezs activities and terrorist ideology, which was rooted in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. While training, he was given the pseudonym “Carlos” by PFLP spokesman Bassam Abu-Sharif. The Guardian newspaper in Britain gave him the moniker “The Jackal” after police found a copy of Frederick Forsyths The Day of the Jackal in his abandoned apartment following his assassination of French intelligence agents (Hamm, 2007)⁠. Carlos the Jackal has freelanced for Saddam Hussein, Moammar Qaddafi, Marshal Tito, the Italian Red Brigade, the Spanish Basque ETA and the secret services of several Soviet bloc nations. Carlos the Jackal was arrested by an American and French coalition effort in Khartoum, Sudan, following an operation on his groin. He is now serving a life sentence in Le Sante maximum security prison in Paris, France. Stated purposes In a 1999 interview with New York Press, Sanchez made two main statements regarding his personal beliefs ⁠(Haden-Guest, 1999)⁠. The first is with reference to mainly secular terrorist attacks; that revolutionary development is a barometer of social injustice, and is a permanent cycle. The second one is that the political effects from the growing disparity between rich and poor inevitably results in violently increasing revolutionary backlash. He made the second statement specifically with the then-dominant United States in mind. Carlos the Jackal also stated that the majority of his terrorist attacks were done “in the name of Palestinian liberation and revolution” (Cody, 2010)⁠. In 1998, a will he wrote entitled En Cas de Mon Deces was released to the media. In that will, he stated that for every day that he spends in jail, one American or Zionist should be killed (Haden-Guest, 1999)⁠. Current terrorist and other political/social operations Since Carlos the Jackal is currently incarcerated and serving a life sentence, the focus of this section is on his and his affiliates actions prior to his capture in 1994. Sanchez is most well known for the 1975 kidnapping of over 60 hostages, eleven of which were OPEC oil ministers at the OPEC headquarters in Vienna, Austria (Cody, 2010; Haden-Guest, 1999; “Whats up with the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal?,” 2002)⁠. In this instance, the Jackal and his PFLP cohorts were responsible for three deaths: an Austrian police officer, and two low-ranking members of the ministers delegations. The OPEC kidnapping was done under the orders of PFLP faction leader Dr. Wadih Haddad. The order was to ransom most of the ministers for money that the PFLP needed. However, the oil ministers for Saudi Arabia and Iran, Ahmed Zaki al-Yamani and Jamshid Amouzegar, were to be killed, as the two countries at the time did not support the proposal to raise oil prices. Besides that, Saudi Arabia and Iran were deemed by the PFLP as not supportive enough of the Palestinian cause (“Whats up with the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal?,” 2002)⁠. In Sanchezs own words, Saudi Arabia was not paying their “revolutionary tax” (Haden-Guest, 1999)⁠⁠. Upon the successful kidnapping of the OPEC ministers, Sanchez and the PFLP terrorists flew to Algeria with the hostages. All of the hostages were released upon payment of ransom. The-then Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Fahd paid a ransom of US$50 million for the release of both the Saudi and Iranian ministers, resulting in the sparing of their lives by the Jackal. This breach of orders led to a falling out between Sanchez and Haddad, resulting in his resignation from the PFLP (Haden-Guest, 1999)⁠. Therefore he was not involved in the 1976 hijacking of an Air France jet to Uganda (“Whats up with the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal?,” 2002)⁠. Another major terror operation perpetrated by the Jackal is the series of bombings in Paris in the early 1980s following the arrest of his then-wife Magdalene Kopp and fellow accomplice Bruno Breguet for the possession of explosives in their car in 1982 (Guiness, 2010; “Whats up with the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal?,” 2002)⁠. The purpose of the bombings was to lobby for his wifes release from French authorities. In targeting civilians and French diplomatic associations, Sanchez killed at least 20 people and injured over 100 others (Guiness, 2010)⁠. This did not lead to his wifes release, though she was released in 1985 on good behavior. Carlos the Jackal has a history of other bombings in Europe. In September, 1974 he threw a grenade into a restaurant in Saint Germain, killing two people and injuring 34 (Guiness, 2010)⁠. The aim of this bombing was to pressure the French government into negotiating with the Japanese Red Army (“Whats up with the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal?,” 2002)⁠. At the time, both the Japanese Red Army and Carlos were working for Haddads faction of the PFLP. Throughout the 1970s, the Jackal and his PFLP allies bombed three pro-Israel newspaper and magazine offices in Paris. He also threw a bomb into an Israeli bank branch in London, but nobody died in that incident. Before the Jackal involved himself in bombings, his first major public assassination attempt was on Joseph Edward Sieff, a Zionist and chairman of Marks & Spencer (Guiness, 2010; Haden-Guest, 1999; “Whats up with the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal?,” 2002)⁠. The attempt took place at St. Johns Wood in 1973. The terror plot failed as his gun malfunctioned, causing him to flee from London. Another failed terror plot was the Jackals attempt to take down an Israeli airline aircraft at Orly airport by using shoulder-fired rockets (Cody, 2010)⁠. Carlos the Jackal was initially believed to be responsible for the killings of Israeli Olympic athletes in 1972 in Munich (“Carlos the Jackal - three decades of crime,” 1997; “Whats up with the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal?,” 2002)⁠. However, the Munich incident was the action of a different Palestinian terror group, Black September. In his interview with New York Press, he was asked if rumors about him and his group obtaining and owning a small nuclear device were true (Haden-Guest, 1999)⁠. The claim was made in 1976 by Egyptian media and 1977 by New York Magazine. He denied ever owning such a device and doubted that his associates ever owned one since his capture. Groups from which it draws its support After leaving the PFLP following the OPEC hostage-taking incident, Carlos the Jackal formed his own terrorist group, the Organization of The Armed Arab Struggle – Arm of the Arab Revolution. They operated mostly out of Eastern Europe, where the Soviet countries tolerated his presence but did not offer active support (“Whats up with the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal?,” 2002)⁠. One Soviet country which did contract his services was Romania, whose secret police, the Securitate, hired him to kill Romanian dissidents in France. In 2010 it was revealed that a pact was made between Sanchez and East Germany in the late 1970s (Paterson, 2010)⁠. The communist government allowed him to run his own in headquarters in East Berlin staffed by 75 people. Sanchezs support staff was handpicked by the Stasi and included university lecturers, mechanics and doctors. He was provided with safe houses, apartments, secure telephone lines and cars. Moreover the Jackal was allowed to carry firearms in public. The Stasi also warned him to withdraw from terrorist activity in sensitive times. From his East Berlin headquarters, the Jackal was able to plan attacks on Radio Free Europes office in Munich, the bombing of the Maison de France in West Berlin and other French cultural centers (Paterson, 2010)⁠. During this period, he was able to travel on diplomatic passports provided by various Arab nations, notably Syria and South Yemen (“Whats up with the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal?,” 2002)⁠. After the collapse of Communism in Europe, the former Soviet allies of Sanchez forced him out as a prerequisite for trade with the United States (“Whats up with the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal?,” 2002)⁠. In 1985 the Jackal moved to Damascus, where he had Syrian support. In 1992 he moved to Jordan where he married his second wife, Lena. Finally in 1993 he went to Sudan, which had a strictly Islamist government and close ties to Iran. Since his capture in Sudan, support for Carlos the Jackal has most vocally come from his lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre (Cody, 2010; “Ex-guerrilla Carlos to sue France over solitary confinement,” 2000)⁠. In 1999 and 2009, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez publicly declared his support for Sanchez, calling him an important revolutionary fighter (Haden-Guest, 1999; James, 2009)⁠. Sanchez claims that the only Arab leader to openly betray him was Hassan el Tourabi. Specfic counter-terrorist operations employed to limit or defeat the group In this section the emphasis shall be placed on the circumstances and measures that led to the arrest of Carlos the Jackal by American and French forces in 1994 in Khartoum, Sudan. In 1975, the French domestic counter-intelligence agency, Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST) was informed by Lebanese authorities that major PFLP agent Michel Moukharbal was in Paris. While performing surveillance on Moukharbal, they frequently photographed him with Sanchez. Upon arrest, Moukharbal agreed to lead the DST to the Jackal. Moukharbal led three unarmed DST agents to Sanchezs apartment. Before he could be apprehended, the Jackal fatally shot Moukharbal and two of the DST agents (Guiness, 2010)⁠(“Whats up with the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal?,” 2002)⁠. The Jackal then fled to Algeria. The CIA hired independent contractor and former Special Forces soldier Billy Waugh and a handpicked team to “find and fix” Sanchez and Osama Bin Laden in Khartoum (Crawford, 2009)⁠. They set up a clandestine observation post to monitor the residence of the Jackal. Sanchez was informed that he was being tracked by the CIA and satellite services. The French intelligence agents in Sudan had a tracking device planted in his car by Sudanese general Security. This information was relayed to him by the Egyptian secret police, Mukharabt, who offered him assistance in eluding the authorities in Khartoum (Haden-Guest, 1999)⁠. Carlos the Jackal was seized and placed under arrest after undergoing sensitive surgery on his groin. Upon the capture of he Jackal by American forces, he was then handed over to agents from the French (DST) (Crawford, 2009)⁠. Condoleezza Rice cited the case of the Jackals capture as a precedent for extraordinary renditions under former President George W. Bush (Clarke, 2009)⁠. The Jackal was found guilty in 1997 for the 1975 killings of Moukharbal and Frence intelligence agents and was placed in Le Sante prison (Guiness, 2010)⁠. In 2007, Sanchez was tried for his bombings in the 1980s (“Carlos the Jackal faces new trial,” 2007)⁠. REFERENCES Carlos the Jackal - three decades of crime. (1997). BBC News. Retrieved April 26, 2011, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/42244.stm. Carlos the Jackal faces new trial. (2007). BBC News. Retrieved April 26, 2011, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6623659.stm. Clarke, A. (2009). Rendition to Torture: A Critical Legal History. Utah Valley University. Retrieved April 26, 2011, from http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=alan_clarke. Cody, E. (2010). Carlos the Jackal, imprisoned for life, looks in lawsuit to protect his image. The Washington Post. Retrieved April 26, 2011, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/25/AR2010012503690.html. Crawford, G. A. (2009). Manhunting: Counter-Network Organization for Irregular Warfare. Hurlburt Field, Florida. Ex-guerrilla Carlos to sue France over solitary confinement. (2000). CNN. Retrieved April 26, 2011, from http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/europe/07/20/france.carlos.reut/. Guiness, M. (2010). Carlos the Jackalʼs Parisian trail of destruction. RFI English. Retrieved April 26, 2011, from http://www.english.rfi.fr/visiting-france/20101104-carlos. Haden-Guest, A. (1999). Correspondence with “Carlos the Jackal.” New York Press. Retrieved April 26, 2011, from http://www.nypress.com/article-329-correspondence-with-carlos-the-jackal.html. Hamm, M. S. (2007). Terrorism as crime: from Oklahoma City to Al-Qaeda and beyond (p. 271). NYU Press. James, I. (2009). Chavez praises Carlos the Jackal. The Independent. Retrieved April 26, 2011, from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/chavez-praises-carlos-the-jackal-1825135.html. Paterson, T. (2010). Rescued from the shredder, Carlos the Jackalʼs missing years. The Independent. Retrieved April 26, 2011, from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/rescued-from-the-shredder-carlos-the-jackals-missing-years-2120492.html. Pons, E. (2001). Castro and Terrorism: A Chronology. Institute for Cuban & Cuban-American Studies Occasional Papers. Retrieved April 26, 2011, from http://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=iccaspapers&sei-redir=1#search=. Whatʼs up with the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal? (2002). The Straight Dope. Retrieved April 26, 2011, from http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2014/whats-up-with-the-notorious-terrorist-carlos-the-jackal. Read More