The terrorist Carlos the Jackal went on trial today for his role in four bombings in the 1980s that targeted trains and a newspaper office, killing 11 people.
The native-born Venezuelan was once the most sought-after fugitive in Europe, a mysterious figure who killed two French secret police and an informant before being apprehended in Sudan in 1994.
The Jackal’s real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez. He first gained headlines and notoriety for an attack on an OPEC meeting in 1975 on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in which he took some 60 hostages, including 11 oil ministers. His current trial follows the discovery of evidence against him in communist-era files from Hungary, Germany, and Romania. He is suspected in a dozen other cases for terrorism spanning three decades. Today in a Paris court, Ramirez said he was a “professional revolutionary,” according to the Associated Press. He claims involvement in some 100 terrorist attacks. What is the Jackal's story?
How he got his nickname
Ramirez was first codenamed “Johnny” but is said to have been dubbed “Carlos” on a trip to Jordan. The name “Carlos” showed up on a false passport discovered by the French police.
The nickname "Carlos the Jackal" was coined after the Guardian reported that Fredrick Forsythe’s novel “The Day of the Jackal” was found among his alleged possessions in a London apartment occupied by a Basque separatist named Maria Angela Otaola Baranca. Ms. Baranca's boyfriend found a bag of weapons in the flat and contacted the Guardian. Two reporters found a copy of the Forsyth novel about a hit-man hired to assassinate General Charles de Gaulle, and the nickname was born, though the Guardian later reported the book was simply found on a shelf in the apartment.
Jackal film biopic
While “The Day of the Jackal” is a famed Hollywood film based on the Forsyth novel, Mr. Ramirez’s exploits have also been captured on the silver screen. A French television series by director Olivier Assayas has been released as a 165-minute biopic named “Carlos” that won a Golden Globe award. In it, the Carlos figure plays out as a kind of alter-ego of James Bond.
The director was a student in the Paris Left Bank at the time Ramirez shot two police and an informer and disappeared. The director later said in an interview, “Nobody seemed to be able to catch him or even locate him. Things like that fire the imagination. It's all about the mystery. Of course, once you start to find out the truth – after the end of the cold war – you realize how disconnected the myth is from the reality."
His latest wife
The Jackal is married to his lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre. Ms. Peyre has defended mostly radical leftists, including Khmer Rouge leaders, but she has also represented people accused of anti-Semitism and Zacarias Moussaoui, whom the US government accused of being a 9/11 plotter.
Sanchez is a converted Muslim and Ms. Coutant-Peyre was brought up Catholic. They met in 1982 when Coutant-Peyre was working for Jacques Verges, a lawyer who defended Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. At the time, Mr. Verges was defending the Jackal’s first wife, Magdalena Kopp, who was sentenced for a planned bombing in Paris. Coutant-Peyre and Mr. Verges initially defended the Jackal, but the Jackal sacked Verges in 1997 and made Peyre his chief lawyer. In 2001 the two were married in a French prison. Peyre is his third wife.
Other crimes
In addition to the attack on OPEC in 1975 that left three dead, the killing of the French police, and the alleged bombings he is on trial for, the Jackal is suspected of crimes in a half dozen European nations. These include:
- A possible lead role in the attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic games
- Bomb attacks in Paris, including a 1982 explosion that killed one and injured 63
- A grenade attack on an Israeli-owned bank in London
- Wounding the president of the department store Marks and Spencer in London, Edward Sieff
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