Ilich Ramirez Sanchez aka Carlos the jackal Essay

Ilich Ramirez Sanchez aka Carlos the jackal - Essay Example 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 Sanchez's activities and terrorist ideology, which was rooted in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. While training, he was given the pseudonym â€Å"Carlos† by PFLP spokesman Bassam Abu-Sharif. The Guardian newspaper in Britain gave him the moniker â€Å"The Jackal† after police found a copy of Frederick Forsyth's 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 coaliti on 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 â€Å"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 th at 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; â€Å"What's 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 an d 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 (â€Å"What's up with the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal?,† 2002)?. In Sanchez's own words, Saudi Arabia was not paying their â€Å"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.