Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 16, 1994 TAG: 9408160109
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Sudan arrested the Venezuelan-born fugitive and turned him over to France, ending a 20-year hunt for the man whose bloody exploits mirrored the brand of international thriller novel that gave him his nickname.
As a terrorist-for-hire, Carlos reportedly teamed up with some of the world's most notorious groups, including Germany's Red Army Faction, the Japanese Red Army, the Basque separatist movement in Spain and various Palestinian organizations.
He was most often linked to the murky world of Middle East terrorism. Intelligence reports connected him with the 1972 massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, a 1975 attack on OPEC headquarters, and the 1976 hijacking of an Air France jetliner to Entebbe, Uganda.
Carlos, 44, was locked up in La Sante prison in southern Paris. He was to go before a special terrorism judge today for indictment in at least one killing and the opening of an investigation into numerous others.
A French court convicted Carlos in absentia in June 1992 and sentenced him to life in prison for the 1974 shooting deaths of two counterintelligence agents. Under French law, he will have to be retried for the slayings.
Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, announcing the arrest, called Carlos ``a true professional of terrorism'' who claims to have killed 83 people around the world.
``I rejoice that one of the most dangerous terrorists in recent years is now in the hands of justice,'' he said.
Pasqua said Carlos was directly or indirectly responsible for killing at least 15 people on French soil and injuring 200.
Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, got his nom de guerre after British tabloids learned that a copy of Frederick Forsyth's 1971 thriller, ``Day of the Jackal,'' was found in one of his early London safehouses. The novel tells the story of a professional killer hired to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle.
The flamboyant terrorist long worked in the foreign operations section of the feared Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He is best known for his alleged roles in the Munich massacre and the Entebbe highjacking, which ended with an Israeli commando raid.
But Yigal Carmon, a former adviser on terrorism to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, said Carlos had nothing to do with the Munich attack.
Carlos also is suspected in the 1974 takeover of the French Embassy in The Hague, Netherlands, and the attack on the headquarters of the OPEC oil cartel in Vienna, Austria, in which three people were killed and 11 taken hostage.
Pasqua described him as a ``mercenary at the disposition of the liberation movements of the world.''
``He was without doubt animated by a sort of ferocious passion that turned delirious,'' the minister said.
France's former intelligence chief, Pierre Marion, said that during the Cold War, Carlos moved between East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Syria ``with extraordinary protections at his disposal ... To catch him then wasn't possible.''
But with the fall of communism, Carlos lost his protection, Marion said.
Pasqua said French counterintelligence agents, helped by friendly countries, found Carlos early this year in Sudan, where he was living under a false name, having entered six months ago on a false passport.
``[Sunday] morning, Sudanese authorities let us know they had positively identified Carlos and were ready to respond to French arrest warrants,'' he said.
Carlos was returned to France on Monday.
Pasqua said Sudan, which the United States blacklisted last August as a nation supporting terrorism, had not asked for compensation for handing over Carlos, but he suggested Sudan might be trying to prove its good will to the West in an effort to end its ostracism.
In fact, Sudanese Justice Minister Abdel-Azziz Shado called Monday for the United States to remove it from the blacklist, which has cost it most of its aid, Egypt's Middle East News Agency reported.
Carlos has been reported captured or killed many times before.
In 1981, Mexico City police claimed the world's attention by saying they'd captured him. Their ``Carlos'' turned out to be a frightened armed robber with only a passing resemblance to the terrorist.
Born Oct. 12, 1949, Carlos is the son of a wealthy communist Venezuelan lawyer, Jose Allagracia Sanchez, who gave each of his three sons one name of Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
Following his notorious exploits in the 1970s, Carlos reportedly organized covert operations for Syria aimed at overthrowing the Iraqi government. Some reports said he was the leader of a Libyan hit squad sent to kill U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
In March 1982, Carlos threatened attacks against the French government unless it freed two of his suspected agents, Bruno Breguet, a Swiss, and Magdalena Kopp, a West German terrorist, both arrested the previous month in Paris.
Later that month, a bomb exploded aboard the Paris-Toulouse express, killing six people and wounding 15. The French blamed Carlos.
Kopp and Breguet were released in May 1985. Kopp reportedly flew to Damascus to join Carlos, married him and had a child, Rosa.
Carlos had dropped out of sight in recent years, and antiterrorist experts had believed he was in Syria.
In 1992, Carlos was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for shooting to death two agents investigating attacks on Israel's El Al airplanes at Paris' Orly Airport.
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