Terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (aka Carlos the Jackal) was born to an affluent family in Caracas, Venezuela, on October 12, 1949. His parents, Elba Maria Sanchez and lawyer Jose Altagracia Ramirez Navas, were highly educated individuals. His father was a devout Marxist who, over his wife's objection, named each of his three sons after his hero Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov (Lenin). While his mother tried to persuade the children to follow her Catholic faith, Jose heavily indoctrinated his boys in his Marxist-Leninist beliefs. After long separations, his parents divorced when Ilich was thirteen.
After the divorce, Jose Navas sent Ilich to the Fermin Toro Lycée School, that was known for its extreme leftist leanings. In 1964, at age 15, Ilich joined the Venezuelan Communist Party. It was rumored that he went to a Cuban camp to receive training in terrorism-related skills. In 1966, his mother moved with her children to London, and there Ilich continued his involvement with communist groups. Ilich attended university in Moscow at the Patrice Lumumba University, a school known for breeding future Third World leaders for Soviet expansion. Ilich was a natural leader with a talent for languages. Accused of anti-Soviet activities, Ilich was expelled from the university in 1970 for his participation in a demonstration staged by Arab students.
After his stint at university, in July of 1970 Ilich was invited to attend a terrorist training camp in Jordan by Wadi Haddad, a notorious terrorist who had formed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to promote by the use of violence Palestine liberation from Israeli control. He was given the code name Carlos.
In combat, along side the Palestinians, Carlos earned a reputation as a fearless fighter and calculating killer. In February 1971, Carlos returned to London to integrate himself into British society so that he could select a list of targets for murder and kidnapping by the terrorists. He moved in with his mother, joined in her social set, and enrolled in the University of London. Undercover, he searched for potential targets, eventually selecting Joseph Sieff, president of Marks and Spencer department stores and a member of the British Zionist Federation. On December 30, 1973, he went to Sieff's home and, at gunpoint, forced the butler to escort him to Sieff's bathroom. Carlos shot Sieff in the face. As he fell wounded to the floor, Carlos tried to shoot him a second time but the gun jammed. Carlos was forced to flee as police were on the scene almost immediately. This was Carlos' first confirmed terrorist act.
Carlos was a master of disguise and fluent in several languages. Mohammar Quaddaffi of Libya, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Fidel Castro, President Assad of Syria, Italy's Red Brigade, and the German group, Baader-Meinholf, allegedly employed him. He was involved in the takeover of the French Embassy at the Hague, the murders of two French intelligence agents, the 1976 kidnapping of OPEC oil ministers in Vienna and the 1976 skyjacking that led to the Israeli Entebbe raid. Carlos was later linked to the 1972 massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics and many other terrorist atrocities were attributed to him despite lack of concrete evidence. It is unlikely that Carlos participated in most of these incidents, but these attributions greatly enhanced his mystique.
Carlos vanished in the late 1980s, but the French were relentless in their pursuit and eventually located Carlos in the Sudan. The French government convinced Sudan to turn him over. On December 23, 1997, Carlos was convicted of the 1975 murders of the two French Intelligence agents and received a life sentence.
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