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See Also

See Also in
Notorious Lives

Abu Nidal

Mohammed Atta al-Sayed

Osama Bin Laden

Baruch Goldstein

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed

Muammar al-Qaddafi

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Great Lives from History: Notorious Lives

Ilich Ramírez Sánchez

by Thomas E. Baker, James C. Roberts

Venezuelan terrorist

Also known as: Carlos the Jackal

Major offenses: Terrorism, bombings, and skyjacking

Active: 1973-1983

Locale: England, France, and the Middle East

Sentence: Life imprisonment

Early Life

Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (IHL-yich rah-MEER-ehz SAN-chehz) was named by his father, José Altagracia Ramírez Navas, a wealthy Venezuelan Communist leader, after the founder of the Soviet Communist Party. Navas, a staunch Marxist, insisted that his three sons’ names reflect the identity of his idol, Vladimir Ilich Lenin.

Ilich’s parents divorced in 1958 because of his father’s numerous extramarital affairs. His mother traveled between Jamaica and Mexico for several years before moving back to Caracas. The constant upheaval disorganized Ilich’s adolescence. In addition, he was the target of teasing from peers about his weight. Ilich consoled himself by telling others that one day the rest of the world would come to know his deeds and greatness.

Ilich’s father sent his son to the best communist schools to instill Marxist/Leninist political philosophy in the young man, including Moscow’s Patrice Lumumba University. His education had helped engender an emerging terrorist. Ilich’s next destination was a guerrilla training camp in Jordan run by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). It was there that he gained the nickname Carlos, reportedly given to him by Palestine Liberation Organization official Bassam Abu Sharif. The press would later christen Carlos “the Jackal” when a copy of Frederick Forsyth’s book The Day of the Jackal (1971) was found in his belongings, although it did not actually belong to him.

Terrorist Career

From an investigative perspective, law enforcement authorities found it difficult to link Ramírez to specific crimes. The most useful cases in that regard concerned the assassination of two unarmed French counterintelligence agents and a 1973 attempt on the life of Joseph Edward Sieff. In one of Ramírez’s early botched terrorist attacks for the PFLP, he attempted the assassination of British businessman Sieff in 1973. The Jewish millionaire was the owner of the Marks & Spencer department store chain. Ramirez shot his victim in the face; Sieff survived the foiled execution because the weapon malfunctioned.

Ramírez’s later participation in terrorist acts included two failed grenade bombings of El Al jets at Orly Airport in France in 1975. Later that year, he and five others invaded a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna and took more than sixty hostages, all of whom they later released. Ramírez was subsequently expelled from the PFLP for failing to execute two of the senior oil ministers of Middle Eastern states.

He was blamed for other attacks for which it is now clear he bore no responsibility, such as the attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich and the hijacking of Air France flight 193 to Entebbe in 1976. Ramírez, nonetheless, was a suspect in several bombings involving numerous casualties in France in 1982 and 1983. He was allegedly involved in the planning and execution of several attacks against Israel in the mid-1980’s.

Carlos the Jackal was seen in the roles of hedonistic playboy and, alternately, dedicated communist terrorist. Ramírez became an almost mystical terrorist and media personality during the 1980’s. However, he disappeared from the scene near the end of the decade. Some media representatives described him as a ruthless terrorist and professional mercenary, while others portrayed him as a psychotic and incompetent criminal. Numerous disguises, false identities, and passports facilitated Ramírez’s image as an elusive master terrorist.

Legal Action and Outcome

Originally, French courts tried Ilich Ramírez Sánchez in absentia for the 1975 deaths of two Paris policemen and a PFLP guerrilla who had turned Israeli spy. In 1994, Ramírez’s terrorist career ended when he was apprehended in Sudan. He had been sedated for a liposuction procedure when French law enforcement authorities entered the operating room and arrested him. Ramírez was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment at the maximum security wing of France’s Le Santé prison on December 23, 1997.

Impact

As of 2006, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez resided in a French prison; Carlos the Jackal or inmate Ramírez had become detainee 872686/X. In 2003, his book, L’Islam révolutionnaire, a collection of his writings, was published in Monaco. In the book he states his support for the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. Several fictional characters have been based on Ramírez, including a character in Tom Clancy’s novel Rainbow Six (1998).

Further Reading

1 

Follain, John. Jackal: Finally, the Complete Story of the Legendary Terrorist Carlos the Jackal. New York: Arcade, 1998. A biographical account of Ramírez’s terrorist and revolutionary career. The analysis includes a portrait of Carlos the Jackal’s private life.

2 

Waugh, Billy, with Tim Keown. Hunting the Jackal: A Special Forces and CIA Ground Soldier’s Fifty-Year Career Hunting America’s Enemies. New York: William Morrow, 2004. An autobiographical account of the author’s experiences, with specifics on the tracking of Carlos the Jackal. Also reviews other special operations missions.

3 

Yallop, David. Tracking the Jackal: The Search for the World’s Most Wanted Man. New York: Random House, 1993. A biographical account of Carlos the Jackal’s life and mystique and an almost sympathetic account of Ramírez’s crimes.

Citation Types

MLA 9th
Baker, Thomas E., and James C. Roberts. "Ilich Ramírez Sánchez." Great Lives from History: Notorious Lives, edited by Carl L. Bankston III, Salem Press, 2007. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLN_1496.
APA 7th
Baker, T. E., & Roberts, J. C. (2007). Ilich Ramírez Sánchez. In C. L. Bankston III (Ed.), Great Lives from History: Notorious Lives. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Baker, Thomas E. and Roberts, James C. "Ilich Ramírez Sánchez." Edited by Carl L. Bankston III. Great Lives from History: Notorious Lives. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2007. Accessed September 17, 2026. online.salempress.com.