Terrorist Carlos Jackal: "I'm tired of living in handcuffs and I want to be free!"

Gennady Charodeyev

Almost a year ago, in a prison located somewhere in the French countryside, Ilyich celebrated his birthday - he turned 71. They say that the "star" of international terrorism is still keen on reading the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and is very proud of his name. He inherited it from his parents, who greatly respected the founder of the world's first state of workers and peasants. The father and eldest sons gave the names - Vladimir and Lenin.

Ilyich received the term in question in March 2017 for an explosion in the Drugstore Publicis store in the central Paris Saint-Germain-des-Prés district, which the criminals organized on September 15, 1974. Then two people were killed and 34 were injured.

Sanchez denied any involvement in the attack. Fingerprints and other physical evidence were not found by the police. However, the court found him guilty based on the testimony of informants, including his repentant German accomplice Hans Klein, writes Deutsche Welle.

In September 1974, Sanchez threw a grenade at Drugstore Publicis in central Paris. Several grenades similar to the one fired at the pharmacy had previously been stolen from a Bundeswehr warehouse. One of them was found during a search in the house of Sanchez's mistress.

According to the authorities, the purpose of the explosion was to put pressure on the French government to release from prison a Japanese leftist terrorist who had recently been arrested at Orly airport on suspicion of involvement in the hostage-taking at the French embassy in The Hague.

In November 2019, the Supreme Court of Cassation rejected Ilyich's appeal against the verdict, but ruled that the case should be re-examined by the court of first instance, since the terrorist was sentenced simultaneously for using and transporting explosives. This, according to the judges, was a double punishment for one crime. At the same time, Sanchez's guilt was not questioned.

Earlier in France, Jackal received two more life sentences: for the murder of two police officers and a Palestinian informant while trying to arrest him in 1975 and for a series of bombings in Paris and Marseille in 1982-1983. Then 11 people died and more than 190 were injured.

Carlos Jackal, DW recalled, was born on October 12, 1949 in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas. His father had intended to become a Catholic priest in his youth, but then, becoming a successful lawyer, turned into a convinced Stalinist.

From childhood, Sanchez Sr. told children about the great blessing of the world revolution and set them up to fight the capitalists. Most of all, Ilyich succumbed to his father's propaganda, who, according to his father's behests, joined the Komsomol of Venezuela - the youth wing of the local Communist Party. However, the young man did not show any serious success in Venezuela.

Soon his parents divorced, and Ilyich and his mother left for London, where he spent almost two years.

According to Carlos, in his declining years, his father returned to the faith and died, not reading Marx, but the Bible.

In 1968 Ilyich, on a quota from the Venezuelan Communist Party, entered the preparatory department of the Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University in Moscow, but was expelled from the second year for absenteeism and at the request of the Venezuelan party leadership "because of ideological differences."

This time was sharply distinguished by an abundance of high-profile world events. Che Guevara was executed in the Bolivian jungle. The "Prague Spring" began, student riots swept across France. The world was changing rapidly, the "new left" entered the arena, who considered the Kremlin partocrats even more villains than the capitalists. The young hedonist Sanchez was oppressed by boring Moscow, which remained aloof from all significant events in the world.

During his studies at the university, Sanchez could not come to terms with the severity and conservatism of the order. From childhood he was accustomed to luxury and to the fact that no one limited him. Entertainment, which he practiced since his youth, was considered in Moscow, if not criminal, then undesirable.

The commandants of the hostel, in which Ilyich lived, now and then scolded him for bad behavior, for drinking with girls of easy virtue. In the end, the administration even complained to his father and demanded that he send less money to his son, since in Moscow it is not customary for students to lead such a riotous lifestyle. However, this attempt only angered the parent, who declared that his son would not need anything further.

What Ilyich did for a year and a half, apart from occasional appearances in classrooms, is unknown. There were newspapers in the West that claimed, with reference to "sources in the intelligence community," that Sanchez had allegedly undergone combat training at the KGB sabotage and intelligence school in Cuba even before his arrival in the USSR.

Be that as it may, in Moscow Ilyich made friends with the radical Palestinians. After dropping out of the university, he went to Jordan, where he declared that he had become disillusioned with communism, and underwent a six-month training in the camp of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine under the leadership of one of the leaders of the front, George Habash, who gave him the pseudonym "Carlos".

But the nickname Jackal was given to him by journalists - after a search in a hotel room in his belongings was found Federic Forsythe's book "The Day of the Jackal."

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Jackal committed many high-profile terrorist attacks in different countries, collaborating with the PFLP, the West German terrorist group Baader-Meinhof and the Japanese underground organization Red Army.

The most famous operation of the Jackal is the attack on the OPEC headquarters in Vienna in December 1975, when a conference of oil ministers of the Organization's member states was held there. Sanchez and five militants took 70 hostages, including 11 ministers. A member of the Libyan delegation and an Iraqi bodyguard were killed in the shootout.

The next day, the Austrian government provided the terrorists with a plane to fly to Algeria. At the Vienna airport, the Jackal released 40 hostages, the rest were soon released for a large ransom.

It is also known about another, incredible in its audacity, terrorist attack at Orly airport in Paris. The jackal decided to infiltrate the runway and shoot down a landing passenger airliner from a grenade launcher.

The target was the plane of the Israeli airline El Al, flying from New York. Carlos's accomplice was a German ultra-left radical named Weinrich. They rented a car and parked it between the two terminals of the airport. From this place, the runway was visible, and it was within the reach of the RPG from which Weinrich was supposed to shoot.

Fortunately, the German turned out to be a lousy shooter. When the plane began to land, he demonstratively pulled out a grenade launcher and began to aim, and was immediately spotted by airport security.

Panic arose, and the terrorist had to shoot in a hurry. In the end, he missed. The Israeli plane began to climb again, and Weinrich missed again on the second attempt. After that, both terrorists jumped into the car and fled. They threw the car a few kilometers from the airport, and they themselves lay down "on the bottom." Carlos contacted the media and, on behalf of the terrorist group "Commandos in Memory of Budia", took responsibility for the attack and promised to return and finish the case.

In 1975 Ilyich converted to Islam. He continued to hide from the intelligence services of dozens of countries and lived under false names in the GDR, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, but there was still no direct evidence of his connection with the KGB or Stasi.

Since the early 1990s, the Jackal has been hiding in Sudan. On August 15, 1994, the terrorist was arrested and handed over to French intelligence officers by the local authorities.

“I am a professional revolutionary. It's my job to kill”, - Sanchez said in March 2018 at a hearing in the French Supreme Court of Cassation, adding that an unfairly organized society forced him to resort to violence.

According to Deutsche Welle, in May 2017, six Russian writers sent an open letter to French President Emmanuel Macron urging him to pardon Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez.

In March 2018, Sanchez asked Moscow to grant him Russian citizenship so that he could later be exchanged for some Western spy. Both appeals were ignored.

As DW notes, despite the fact that the Jackal is tired of sitting alone, any decision of the French court will have no practical consequences for him. However, Sanchez's lawyer Isabel Coutan said: “This process is not serious, but something needs to be done! Anything is possible".