His first stop was Beirut where he arrived unannounced at the office of Bassam Abu-Sharif, the unofficial “recruiting officer” for the Popular Front. Abu-Sharif was impressed with the fervor of Ilich’s convictions and made arrangements for him to begin his training. According to subsequent investigations, it was at that first meeting that Ilich was given the name that, in the years to come, would strike terror throughout the world. From that day forward, Ilich was known only as “Carlos.”
Within weeks of the meeting, Carlos traveled to a Palestinian training camp in the hills north of Amman, Jordan to begin training in weapons handling and explosives interspersed with heavy doses of political propaganda. Even though he did well in his studies there, the course was peppered with fake attacks and other tests of the trainee’s bravery. Carlos refused to take them seriously and longed for “real action.” In the final week of his training, he got his wish when Israeli jets bombed an adjoining camp and killed a member of Yasser Arafat’s personal guard. A week later, Carlos returned to Amman. Anxious to move on to “more exciting” pursuits, Carlos contacted Abou Semir, a senior member of the Popular Front, and was sent to an advanced commando training camp.
On September 6 1970, Haddad ordered the simultaneous hijacking of four airliners bound for New York. Leila Khaled, one of Haddad’s trusted lieutenants, led the first attack. Khaled had come to notoriety when she had successfully hijacked a TWA flight to Damascus in 1969. In July 1970, Khaled had escaped serious injury when remote controlled rockets were fired into Haddad’s house during a meeting. Incredibly, two of the four rockets failed to explode but Haddad’s wife and eight-year-old son, who were in another room, received cuts and burns. Haddad blamed Mossad, Israel’s secret service, for the attack.
Khaled’s mission was to hijack an El Al flight, which was en-route to New York from Tel Aviv via Amsterdam. The plan was for Khaled and her accomplice, Patrick Arguello, to pose as a married couple and take control of the aircraft. As the plane approached the English coast, the pair rose from their seats and, brandishing guns, made their way to the cockpit. As they reached the flight deck the pilot thrust the aircraft into a steep nosedive throwing the terrorists off their feet. In the scuffle that followed, Arguello threw a hand grenade down the aisle of the plane and was shot dead shortly after by an El Al “sky marshal.” Fortunately the grenade failed to explode. Khaled was overpowered by male passengers and savagely beaten as she tried to retrieve her own grenades, which had been secreted inside her brassiere.
After an emergency landing at Heathrow Airport, Khaled became the subject of a heated argument as El Al security and British police fought over who had jurisdiction over the prisoner. Eventually the Israelis conceded defeat and Khaled was taken into British custody.
Dawson’s Field, 1970
The second attack also met with problems when the Pan Am 747 was found to be too big to land at the Jordanian airstrip that Haddad had selected. Instead it was flown to Cairo where the passengers and crew were ordered off before the plane was blown up. The other two aircraft, a Swissair DC8 from Zurich and a TWA 707 from Frankfurt were successfully captured and flown to Zarqa airstrip in Jordan as planned. In honour of the event the Palestinians renamed Dawson’s Field, a former British airstrip, “Revolution Airstrip.” In a public announcement, the Popular Front described the attacks as the first strike in avenging “the American plot to liquidate the Palestinian cause by supplying arms to Israel.” They further ordered the Swiss and West German governments to release several of their jailed comrades.
A further hijacking by a Popular Front sympathizer saw a BOAC flight from Bombay to London carrying 150 passengers taken hostage and held at Zarqa pending Khaled’s release. After twenty-four hours of intense negotiations, 360 passengers and crews were released in exchange for Khaled and six other convicted terrorists. As a final act of revenge, terrorist bombers destroyed the aircraft. Carlos, as a new recruit with no experience, was not used in the attacks but spent the time guarding a munitions depot far from the action.
Prior to the hijackings, King Hussein of Jordan had been mostly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and had allowed over fifty terrorist groups into his country. Tensions had been mounting however, since Palestinian attacks on Jewish targets had increased Jordan’s vulnerability to retaliatory strikes from Israel. The tension increased in February 1970 when Jordanian troops, attempting to enforce a royal decree that ordered the Palestinians to surrender their guns and explosives, clashed with the “freedom fighters” in a street brawl that lasted three days. The decree was later abandoned.
Incensed that the Popular Front would have the audacity the carry out such an act on Jordanian soil without his consent, Hussein decreed marshal law and raised his Bedu army to drive the Palestinians out of Jordan. The resulting conflict was dubbed “Black September” and was to become Carlos’s first taste of real warfare.
Carlos fought alongside Abu-Sharif against the Jordanian army until 1970 but the war continued to rage another year before King Hussein claimed victory over his enemy. More than three thousand Palestinians died during the conflict, during which Carlos gained the reputation as a fearless fighter and a cool calculating killer. Following their defeat, most members of the Popular Front fled to Israel rather than be taken prisoner by the Bedu army. Carlos was not among them; George Habash had other plans for his young prot?g?.
Carlos the “playboy,” with mother and friend (Yallop)
He was selected for appointment as the Popular Front’s representative in London. His task was to ingratiate himself into British society and draw up a list of “high profile” targets that would either be murdered or kidnapped. On his return from Jordan, Carlos was sent to another training camp to learn the “finer points” of terrorism. By February 1971, Carlos was considered ready for his appointment and traveled to London to be reunited with his family. With his mother’s influence, he quickly slipped back into the “cocktail-party set” and resumed his playboy habits.
He attended the University of London to study economics and later took Russian language courses at Central London Polytechnic, all part of his carefully planned fa?ade. His Popular Front contact in London was Mohamed Bouria, an Algerian who, as one of Haddad’s most loyal followers, was responsible for European operations. In search of targets, Carlos poured over English newspapers selecting any prominent citizens who were either Jewish or had Israeli sympathies. Once he had created his list, he went to great pains to learn as much about his targets as he could, including home addresses, telephone numbers, nick names and as many personal details as he could glean. His list of names included famous film identities, entertainers politicians and prominent business figures.
By December 1971, he had compiled a detailed list containing hundreds of names. It was during this time that his early career as an undercover terrorist was almost terminated. Acting on a tip-off, members of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch raided the house in Walpole Street, Chelsea, where he lived with his mother, but after searching the house, found nothing of an incriminating nature. They were led to believe that Carlos was linked to a cache of illegal weapons that had been seized in a previous raid at the house of one of his friends. Incredibly, a fake Italian passport bearing a picture of Carlos was found in the raid but the police considered it unimportant. Apart from being placed under surveillance for several days after the raid, the police left him alone. The family later moved to a new apartment in Kensington.
Maria Tobon (Yallop)
Despite his Latin American charm and impeccable manners, the many eligible young society ladies that he came into contact with often rebuffed Carlos. One woman however, was attracted by his charm but became more enamored by his political fervor. Maria Nydia Romero de Tobon was an attractive, thirty-seven-year-old Colombian divorcee who moved to London following her divorce to resume her University studies. Nydia, whose grandfather had founded the Colombian Liberal Party, was a revolutionary at heart and was won over by Carlos and the passion he showed for his cause. Some months later, Carlos successfully recruited Nydia and enlisted her aid in securing a string of safe houses for visiting envoys.
At one point she posed as the wife of Antonio Dagues-Bouvier, the Ecuadorian guerrilla who had supposedly trained Carlos in Cuba, and rented three apartments in central London. Her other duties included transporting documents and funds. Carlos would later tell investigators that he and Dagues-Bouvier had, at that time, carried out several “missions” against selected targets. No record has ever been found of any such events having occurred. The general belief is that Carlos’s time in London was largely one of inactivity, while in other parts of the world; Haddad had selected others to play his deadly games.
During February 1972, while Carlos languished in London, one of Haddad’s teams was hijacking a Lufthansa airliner to Aden. One of the 172 passengers taken hostage was Joseph Kennedy, son of the late Robert Kennedy. Following a short period of negotiations, Kennedy and the other hostages were released safely after the West German government paid a $5,000,000 ransom. The following May, Haddad sent three members of the Japanese Red Army to carry out a brutal attack at Tel Aviv’s Lod airport. After arriving at the airport, the three men retrieved automatic weapons and grenades from their luggage and opened fire on the crowd. By the time the firing had stopped, twenty-three travelers were dead and another seventy-six were wounded.
A gunman during the Munich Olympic Games attack
Two of the terrorists died during the attack, but not from opposing fire. One was killed accidentally when hit by a stray round from one of his companions and the other died when a grenade he was holding detonated prematurely. In September of the same year, a commando squad made up of members of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah calling themselves “Black September” launched a pre-dawn raid on the Israeli dormitory at the Munich Olympics. After killing one of the athletes and a coach, the group held the other athletes hostage and demanded the release of 200 of their countrymen who were imprisoned in Israel.
After a day of terse negotiations, the West Germans agreed to supply a jet that would take the group and their hostages to Cairo. All went according to plan until German snipers at the airport fired upon the commandos. In the gun battle that followed, nine Israeli athletes and five of the terrorists were killed. When news of the raids reached Carlos he became angry and vented his frustration at having been left out of three decisive strikes that had rocked the world. His frustration mounted as news of the exploits of another of the party faithful reached him.
Mohamed Boudia served as the Popular Front’s chief operative in Paris in the guise of a theatre director. He was notorious for his ability to seduce young women and convert them to his cause. In 1971 Boudia, an explosives expert, took his young German girlfriend and traveled to Rotterdam in Holland. Their mission was to blow up an Israeli goods depot but the mission failed when the explosives were placed incorrectly and destroyed a Gulf oil refinery instead. Unperturbed, Boudia later sent the same girlfriend, and two other women, to Jerusalem during the Easter holiday period, to blow up a string of holiday hotels. The plan failed when Israeli police detained them at Tel Aviv airport where they were searched and found to be carrying plastic explosives and timers secreted under their clothing and in their make-up. In addition, their underwear had been impregnated with inflammable liquid.
Some months later, Boudia and another woman named Therese Lefebvre, tried to attack Schonau castle in Austria, which was used as a transit camp for Russian Jews traveling to Israel. That plan failed but their next attack on an oil refinery in Trieste, Italy succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. The twenty kilos of plastic explosive they planted not only destroyed the refinery, it also crippled the Transalpine pipeline that supplied Bavaria, Vienna and central Europe. The resulting oil fire burned for two days and destroyed 250,000 tons of crude oil, causing damage worth $2.5 billion dollars.
On 28 June 1973, shortly before midday, Boudia left the home of one of his mistresses on the Rue des Fosses-Saint-Bernard. He approached his car and being a cautious person, checked it to see if it had been tampered with. Satisfied that it had not, he climbed into the drivers seat but before he could settle himself in the vehicle, an explosion tore through the car killing him instantly. A later investigation by the DST, the French intelligence organization, revealed that a team of Israeli assassins called the “Wrath of God,” had planted a mine under Boudia’s driver seat. The device, activated by a pressure plate, was a rudimentary one by Israeli standards but proved effective. Boudia had been one of the last targets of the “Wrath of God” group that had been formed to avenge the killings at the Munich Olympics. The group operated with the express approval of the Israeli Prime Minister of the time, Golda Meir.
Three weeks after the attack, Carlos returned to Beirut and asked to be sent to Paris to replace Boudia. Although the leaders of the Popular Front were impressed with his work in London, they felt that he did not have the experience for the job and sent him back to London. On his return he was advised that Michel Moukharbal was to be Boudia’s successor and Carlos was to serve as his second in command. Carlos was not pleased with the decision and resented Moukhabal’s appointment, as he believed that he was unsuitable for the task. Regardless of his disappointment, Carlos made every effort to assist his new leader and agreed that Boudia’s death would have to be avenged by striking at Zionist targets in Europe. The attack on Joseph Sieff in London was the first such strike that Carlos would claim responsibility for but it was only the beginning.
A month after the attack on Sieff, Carlos made an aborted bomb attack on the Israeli Hapoalim Bank in London. The attack was a straightforward one. Carlos arrived at the bank during morning trading and opened the front doors and threw the device inside. The device, made from a Russian hand grenade attached to 600 grams of plastic explosive failed to detonate fully and only succeeded in blowing a small crater in the floor and breaking a window. The only casualty was a nineteen-year-old secretary who received minor cuts.
Office of Minute newspaper after the bombing.
The next chapter in the campaign that Carlos and Moukharbal had devised was the bombing of the offices of three French newspapers that were deemed to be pro-Israeli. Cars full of explosives were left outside the offices of L’Aurore, L’Arche, Minute and Maison de la Radio. The bombs were set to explode at two a.m. and Carlos later claimed that the hour was selected to limit human casualties. In addition he advised the papers of the attack. At the appointed time, three of the four bombs exploded causing massive damage. There were no casualties. The only paper to escape damage was the Maison de la Radio when the vehicle bomb left in front of it failed to detonate.
Michel Moukharbal
While Carlos was making his presence felt in Paris, Haddad was hatching another plot. He advised Carlos and Moukharbal to align themselves with members of the Japanese Red Army. Prior to the planned alliance, Yutaka Furuya, a member of the JRA, had been arrested at Orly airport in Paris. He was detained because he carried three fake passports in various names and $10,000 in counterfeit bills. When questioned he admitted to being a member of the JRA and a supporter of the Palestinian cause. The DST searched their files and found that Furuya had been involved in an attack on a Shell oil refinery in Singapore organized by the Popular Front. Other encrypted documents in Furuya’s possession revealed plans to attack Japanese embassies and companies in seven major European cities.
Furuya was later charged with minor offences relating to the passports and currency and jailed for several months. While he was serving his term of imprisonment, eight other Japanese Red Army members were expelled to Switzerland. The Swiss, wanting no part of terrorists, expelled them to West Germany who in turn sent them to Holland. Within days of their expulsion to Holland, the Japanese Red Army attacked the French embassy in The Hague. The three members who took part in the attack had been equipped and supported by Carlos and Moukharbal prior to the attack.
The plan was for the terrorists to capture the French ambassador when he arrived at the embassy. The attack was late but the JRA commandos succeeded in capturing the ambassador’s driver and forced him to take them to the ambassador’s office. At that point, a random police patrol encountered the terrorists and a gunfight ensued. During the skirmish the leader of the terrorists and two policemen were wounded but the terrorists managed to capture the ambassador, Jacques Senard, and ten other people and hold them hostage in Senard’s office.