All language subtitles for Storyville.S2025E09.The.Jackal.Speaks.1080p.iP.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.HFR.H.264-RAWR_track4_[eng]

TELEPHONE RINGS

The world's most wanted terrorist,
Carlos the Jackal,

has been arrested.

The French intelligence service
traced him to Sudan six months ago,

where he was put under surveillance.

He was arrested yesterday and
flown to Paris early this morning.

The name of Carlos the Jackal
has been linked

with almost every major
international terrorist attack

since the early '70s.

If Time magazine had a category

for the most infamous terrorist
of the decade,

then Carlos the Jackal
would definitely win first place

in the 1970s and 1980s.

Carlos the Jackal was arguably
the biggest name in terrorism

until Bin Laden and, of course,
Imad Mughniyeh from Hezbollah.

They were probably the top
three personas at any given time,

but Carlos was before both of those.

So as Ilich Ramirez Sanchez
is growing up

in this very political household,
he becomes a political youth.

And so in his early teens,

he actually joins
the Venezuelan Communist Youth.

It is supposedly here
that he gets a first feeling

for revolutionary politics.

And allegedly he learns
how to make Molotov cocktails,

how to set cars ablaze.

Skills that do come handy to him

later on in his terrorist career.

Now, he has claimed

that this is also when
he first took a man's life.

I'm not entirely sure
whether that's true.

Carlos was great at building
a mythology around him,

and this really goes back
to his teens.

Carlos moves to London
with his mother and his brothers

in quite an affluent neighbourhood
in Kensington.

Teachers who taught him at
the time didn't have him down

as the best student of the year.

They said he was quite lazy.

They already noticed
some narcissistic tendencies.

And he was, from a very early age,

a so-called snappy dresser.

His father decides that his sons
need further Marxist education.

And so he sends them to

Patrice Lumumba University
in Moscow.

Carlos spends two years there,

but he is quite the opposite of what
a good Soviet young man should be.

He's drinking quite heavily.

He is skipping classes.

He is philandering with women.

And so basically,
two years into his studies,

him and his brother
are both expelled

from this very
prestigious university.

Carlos came to my office

in Beirut in 1969.

My secretary let him in.

And a young man with a beard

that's not fully grown-up yet.

He had this handbag.

So I said,
"Yes, how can I help you?"

He said, "I want to join
the Popular Front."

I said, "OK, so you want to be
a fighter?" He said, "Yes."

But Sam is initially
a little bit sceptical.

He very soon realises that this guy
is actually quite intelligent

and that he's got
a chameleon-like nature,

which is obviously very handy

for someone who is meant to
work in the shadows

as a future fighter
or terrorist operative.

And, OK, from Venezuela.

I sent him to the camp

that trains volunteers

from the International
Revolutionary Movement,

of which I was in charge, too.

At the end of the training,

we made some sort of
manoeuvres with live ammunition,

which include mortar.

So the first mortar
destroyed the kitchen.

And we gave orders that if
an attack starts on the camp,

this group will go here,
this group will go there, etc.

So everybody started to go according
to instructions, except him.

He was still lying, smoking,
with a magazine in his hand.

So I said, "Why are you still here?"

He said, "Because it's fiction.

"It's not a real attack.
If it was a real attack,

"they would start with me,
not with the kitchen."

I said, "OK, come on,
go to the professional camp."

At the professional camp, they saw

that he's very useful

in special operation.

The English,
Spanish languages, presentable.

Since then, his name was Salem
at that time.

But Sam gave him a war name
which turned out to be Carlos,

and later on
he becomes born in battle.

1970 is an important year
for the Popular Front

because in September
they decide to stage basically

the biggest coordinated air-jacking
in history,

or prior to 9/11.

- NEWS REPORT:
- We've just driven
for an hour across the open desert

to this incredibly dangerous
and dramatic situation in which

the people in these two aircraft
find themselves.

The people are being held here
as hostage.

- Can you give us your names first?
- Nigel.

I'm British and I've come
from Bahrain.

The PFLP is completely responsible
for the hostages.

We will treat them in the same way

their governments
treat our own prisoners.

The big message here is,
"Listen, we can hijack your planes.

"We can destroy your property.

"We can take hostage nationals
of dozens of countries,

"if you won't do something
about our cause."

It was a very violent entry to

the minds of people in the world.

But what is important to us

is that it was an entry.

What ensues after the operation is
really a civil war...

..a civil war between
the Palestinians in Jordan

and between the king's army.

It is an important moment
in Carlos' life,

because this is where
a lot of the mythology begins.

Ultimately,
the guerrillas are pushed out.

After Black September,

he was sent to Wadie Haddad's
Department...

..special operations.

AKA, the hijackings,
the assassinations, the bombings.

When someone is sent to
Wadie Haddad department,

that's it, the door is closed.

We are still victorious because
we are still holding our guns.

We feel that the resistance

of our masses is growing
day after day.

I think you'll believe me that
before ten years, few sectors

of public world opinion
knew about our cause.

He sort of takes up his old life -
on the surface, anyway.

He goes to parties,
he hangs out with his siblings,

but in the background,
he's also working on something else.

Shortly after Christmas in 1973,

Carlos decides to strike
for the first time.

He chooses Joseph Edward Sieff,
chairman of Marks and Spencer's,

a very famous British
retail company,

but he's also the vice chairman
of the British Zionist Federation.

We have warned Sieff in 1969

when we attacked Marks & Spencer
in London...

..but Sieff continued his support
to Israel,

donating millions of Sterlings.

And so on the 30th of December 1973,

Carlos walks to Edward Sieff's house

in north-west London
in St John's Wood.

GUNSHOT

SIRENS

CAMERA SHUTTERS

What are your memories of
what actually happened?

Nothing.

Happened in a... In a flash.

Edward Sieff does not die
after the first shot,

and when Carlos tries to deliver
the second shot, his gun jams.

Now, apparently it was your teeth

and the strength
of them which actually saved you.

The bullet went in just
by your nostril there, but was...

- God help the marketing board.
- LAUGHTER

Despite the fact that he gets out
without being caught,

this is quite a disappointing
baptism into terrorism.

Do you think this attack
will have any effect on the people

who support Zionism in Britain
and in the Western world as a whole?

Not at all. Not at all.

I kept the arms for him. He took
the pistol with such tenderness.

And I say, "Oh, it is funny.

"You look at this pistol
as if it was a woman or something.

- "It is ridiculous."
- He told me.
- "Oh, don't laugh,

"because you know what happened
when you are involved

"in this kind of business
and you have the wrong arm,

"you're going to be in trouble."
And I say, "Why?"

And he told me, "When I shot Sieff,
the pistol was jammed."

Only a couple of weeks
after the attempt on Sieff's life,

Carlos tries to throw a grenade

into a branch of an Israeli bank
based in London.

As he tries to hurl the grenade
into the building,

it actually bounces off of the door

and goes in
a completely different direction.

- NEWS REPORT:
- The explosion caused
a small hole in the floor,

a window was blown out,

and light fittings and part of
the ceiling was damaged.

So, frankly, his second attempt
at terror

is also quite unsuccessful.

Police were quickly on the scene,

examining the road outside
for clues,

but at least on this occasion
the police have

an accurate description
of the attacker.

He was seen by passers-by,
builders in the neighbourhood.

- We're now looking for him.
- What is the description?

He's six feet tall, er...

..European, dark glasses
and a light mac. Raincoat.

Carlos turns up with
one of his colleagues,

Johannes Weinrich, a member of
the German Revolutionary Cells.

And these two basically get out
of a car close to Orly airport,

take out an RPG-7,

and try to shoot this into

an El Al flight that's just
about to take off.

EXPLOSION

- NEWS REPORT:
- The attackers shattered
the windscreen of their car

with the recoil of the bazooka.

- NEWS REPORT:
- Security here
at Orly Airport

was thought to be invulnerable.

There's been no terror of note
until today.

MACHINE GUNFIRE

Although Carlos' first attempts
at terror are not successful,

his colleagues, or those
who really sent him

to perpetrate these attacks,
did get one thing right.

And that is
that when you want to send

an operative to carry out
these daring attacks,

you want someone who is somewhere
on the narcissist scale,

slightly psychopathic,

happy to go into
dangerous situations,

not necessarily knowing
what the outcome will be.

The French police,
the British police,

they're obviously very concerned.

They don't know who this person

going around attacking
Jewish or Israeli targets is.

He would leave ammunition,
he would leave weapons,

even target lists, in homes
of his friends and ex-girlfriends.

And this happened with one of
his ex-girlfriends who was living

in London at the time.

Her boyfriend called the media
and said, you know,

"I think that this assailant
you're all looking for,

"I think he left some stuff
in our flat."

And so a Guardian journalist
actually comes to the flat,

and as they're opening
the belongings of Carlos,

where he notices a famous book,

which just came out
a couple of years ago called

The Day Of The Jackal, and it's
a famous novel about an assassin.

He starts calling him
Carlos the Jackal.

And from that point on,
the media adopt this name.

- NEWS REPORT:
- Carlos Martinez
was living with his mother

and two brothers here in Kensington.
His real name,

Ilich Ramirez Sanchez,
a 25-year-old Venezuelan.

He lived in one of the flats
in this block

up till February of this year.

Did the police
take anything away from the flat?

Only some mail, which was up there.

- About four letters.
- Addressed to him?

Addressed to Ramirez.

The French police put a surveillance
team on Michel Moukharbal.

And as they're surveilling
him through the streets of Paris,

they see that he's meeting
a tall, bulky man

who doesn't look too French,

doesn't look too Middle Eastern,
he could be, kind of, from anywhere.

So they arrest
and question Moukharbal.

They interrogate him for days,
and they ask him,

"Who is this man you met?

"Is he in any way connected to
the attacks we've been seeing?"

And although Michel is
kind of reluctant to say more,

he says, "You know what?
This guy is my contact here.

"I'm not entirely sure
what his story is or where he lives,

"but I know
where his girlfriend lives.

"So how about we go to
the Latin Quarter,

"to the small flat, and find out
if she knows a little bit more?"

There's three of them,
plus Michel, the informer,

and they go to a small flat
on Rue Toullier.

It's a stone's throw away
from Notre Dame,

so it's a very central location.

First one to go up is
one of the policemen,

and he finds
a little party under way, actually.

There's drinks, there's
Latin American music playing,

and he finds a slightly jumpy
Latin American man,

and although he asks him
a couple of times

whether he knows
Michel Moukharbal,

this jumpy Latin American man
just denies everything,

even when he's shown
a photograph of himself.

He says, "That's not me. Come on.
This person doesn't look like me."

And so the rest of the policemen
bring the informer upstairs.

And he's quite exhausted, actually,
after days of interrogation.

And he points at Carlos,
and he says,

"That's the man I was meeting
the other day."

GUNFIRE

GUNSHOT

Two of the policemen
are shot dead on the spot.

So is the informer. And one of
the policemen is severely wounded

and taken to the hospital.

It took him three bullets.
Three bullets to kill the three.

GUNSHOTS

Tak, tak, tak.

Calm. Cool.

Good shot.

Ten out of ten, in both hands.

And he took a rose,

gave it to the Frenchwoman and
told her, "We have an appointment.

"I'll let you know about it later."

On to the airport and flew out.

- NEWS REPORT:
- It's in
surroundings like these

that Carlos seems to feel
most at home.

It's a real urban jungle,

providing perfect cover
for a ruthless killer.

Carlos himself is known to be fluent
in several languages,

as well as to be
a master of disguise, but sooner

or later, it's hoped he'll make
a very serious mistake,

which will give the police

a chance of rounding up more of
the European terrorist network.

- NEWS REPORT:
- A spokesman for the
meeting said that the price pause

would give the Western world
a chance to show

their good intentions.

Another demand here was
for action against

what some delegates described

as the excessive profits
of the oil companies.

It was a Sunday.
It was a very snowy day.

We were just doing our normal jobs,

as we were doing that
during the week.

And, uh, around 12 plus, minus,
that, um,

attack had happened.

And, suddenly, there was a shooting.

GUNFIRE AND SCREAMING

I was with three men in a room
and a woman voice was screaming,

"Get out, otherwise I shoot!"

I was just paralysed,
standing behind the door,

then pushed to the conference room,

where all the ministers
and delegates

and my colleagues already
had been laying on the floor.

We were around 60 to 70 people.

I was 26 years old
as Carlos is also 26.

We did not know
what's going on here.

What do they want?
We just knew we were,

of course, in danger.
Already, three people were killed.

SIRENS

- NEWS REPORT:
- The terrorists
warned the police outside

that they had mined
the building with grenades

and explosives as they went in.

Anyone who appeared
in the corridors was shot at.

Of course, I was full of fears.

And as I was crying,
Carlos asked me for my name.

He asked me if
I'm Austrian citizen.

And then he said,

"You're too beautiful to die.
You may go home."

They gave us a bus to the airport.

We wanted a bigger bus
and they gave us smaller bus.

We couldn't take all the hostages,
so we took the main ones.

The first phase basically
went according to plan.

The second phase was the problem.

The ultimate goal here was to
kill the Saudi oil minister,

as well as the Iranian minister

in front of the eyes
of the whole world.

He wanted to show the Saudis
and the Iranians that they should

really be more concerned
with the Palestinian cause,

and not with their relations
with the West and with Israel.

You say that you were not
informed before of the OPEC attack.

Yet, immediately afterwards,

you allowed the man who led
the guerrilla group,

a man called Carlos Sanchez,
to come to Libya.

No, he didn't come here.

Where he is now?

Carlos decided not to kill
the two key targets here.

He decided to set them free.

It isn't clear how much money
it was in the end,

but it was a huge ransom money.

Some estimates say
it was like $15 million.

And for that, all of
the hostages were finally released.

And Carlos and his accomplices
are allowed to basically sneak out.

What was your reaction
when you first learned

that Carlos was involved
in this attack?

I felt I'm about to die.

I knew that I was a target.

He's a very ambitious man.

I think he wants so...

..so many things,

but definitely
he wants to be a hero.

BASSSAM ABU SHARIF:

When he came back, some of

the Special Forces leaders

wanted him to be executed.

But they refused.
And he told them that,

"OK, you got the money? Go."

Following OPEC, he starts the second
era of his terrorist career,

which is basically devoted to money.

From early '76,
he was a gun for hire,

and a businessman of terrorism.

And he liked
that people were afraid of him.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Carlos
is setting up his new organisation.

And so he needs an infrastructure.

He needs people
who can help hide his weapons.

He needs people who can give him
documents, he also needs operatives.

As it seems, Carlos was very
charismatic, or is very charismatic.

He was charming lots of women.

He was also charming quite a number
of young women into his organisation

and turned them into terrorists.

GUNSHOTS

GUNSHOT

Magdalena is not just
some regular member of the group.

She was first
the girlfriend of Johannes Weinrich,

the right-hand man of
Carlos the Jackal,

and it was essentially Weinrich

who introduced Magdalena Kopp
to Carlos.

And very, very shortly
after she was introduced to him,

he basically seduced her

and...they became a couple.

TYRES SCREECH

INTERVIEWER:

CARLOS: Yes, yes.

Magdalena Kopp told me that at
the beginning he was very charming.

I mean, we have the file from
the East German Stasi.

The document says how they went
to bed together the first time.

He spoke about Marxism, Leninism.

And five minutes later,
he took her to the bed.

That might have made the dynamic
within any other trio quite awkward.

But from what we know
of Weinrich being more submissive,

let this one slide.

And him, Magdalena Kopp,
and Carlos the Jackal became

quite a powerful trio
who used to travel together

and work together in
the late 1970s and '80s.

- NEWS REPORT:
- The city of Munich
lies in a cat's cradle of

wires and masts and antennae,

which makes it
the radio capital of Europe,

or rather,
the radio propaganda capital.

This radio station here
doesn't beam its signal

at the people of western Germany,

but people living
behind the Iron Curtain.

Radio Free Europe was really

a bastion of resistance against
the Soviet bloc.

This was a US-funded institution.

It was frankly funded by the CIA
up until the '60s,

broadcasting news into
these Communist countries

and news that was very critical
of these regimes.

So they ordered Carlos
to blow up the building.

The mighty CIA was looking
after him.

They were already very much
in the counterterrorism business.

What made Carlos a formidable target
for us was his invisibility,

he was a guy who was literally
a ghost.

The Jackal is the wrong name
for him.

He should be called the Ghost.

He had the ability to disguise
himself. He had the ability

to get different identifications
so he could travel.

Magdalena Kopp was sent to Paris

to blow up Al-Watan Al-Arabi office
in Paris.

That's an Arab newspaper.

Magdalena was joined
by Bruno Breguet,

another collaborator of Carlos.

So they came to Paris,

and when they prepared the attack
on that newspaper,

they parked the car

in a parking garage

and somebody became suspicious.

He looked at them
and some policemen came

and they started to shoot
at the policemen.

SIREN

They did not kill him,
but they ran away

and they were caught outside
the parking garage.

There is a trial,

and ultimately each one of them gets
about four or five years in prison.

These are not long-term sentences,
but anyway, they are sentences

that very much upset
Carlos the Jackal.

Carlos decides
to do something that's

quite unprecedented in the history
of international terrorism.

He decides to write a letter
to the French government,

and he basically informs them
that these people

who have been arrested are fighting
the good fight,

and he demands that they are
released. And he makes sure

that the French government knows
who this letter is from.

It is from Carlos,

and he also prints his
fingerprint on the letters.

But the French don't give in.

SIRENS

EXPLOSION

SIRENS

- NEWS REPORT:
- A series of attacks
in France left 11 dead

and more than 200 injured.

They go on for years and years.

This is not something
that happens over a couple of weeks.

But the French don't blink.

This persistence
really ticks Carlos off.

It really makes him angry.

It is clear
that these guys have no limits,

that they're basically willing
to work for anyone,

and they're willing
to perpetrate any attack.

And the East Germans,
the Czechoslovaks,

the Bulgarians,
are actually quite afraid of him,

and they gradually start looking

for ways to push Carlos off
of their territory.

And finally they expelled
the Carlos people one by one,

told them, "Don't come back, ever."

And that was when his time
in the Eastern Europe was over.

Then there was only Damascus left.

The deal seems to be that he is
meant to stay away from terrorism,

while he is being supported

and basically harboured
by the Syrians.

Carlos was a party animal.

Magdalena told me
when he was retired in Damascus,

he went to Baghdad to meet
his friends, to play cards,

or to drink some whisky with them
and to talk about,

"Remember how it was in
the old days?

At the time in Damascus,

one of the highlights was
the Irish pub in the Sheraton.

That's where they liked to go.

Weinrich and Carlos spent evenings
there at the Irish pub.

They were joining parties
in private homes.

They tried not to be recognised
as terrorists,

so they had parties with people
who had never heard of them.

Magdalena told me she should have

stopped the relationship
much before,

and at a certain period,

there was no opportunity
for her to get away.

One week before
the Berlin Wall was downed,

that was the last time I saw him.

He wanted me
to join his organisation.

It is arguably one of
the most miserable place to live.

It's filthy. The poverty is endemic.
But what made it

the worst was how corrupt
the Bashir administration there was.

They were really running a hotel
for terrorists.

The fees that they charged,
they spent millions of dollars.

Carlos paid a hefty stipend for...

..for being protected
and being kept in there.

And same thing with Imad Mughniyeh.
If you had money and you were

a radical terrorist
from any walk of life,

you were welcome in Khartoum.

So pictures of the house in Sudan
and it didn't look so luxurious.

It was already at
the end of his career.

His standard
and his living conditions

went down at that time.

When Carlos moves to Sudan,
he for a while thinks he's safe.

What is happening
in the background is actually quite

the opposite of safety and peace.

He made a phone call to
a fellow terrorist,

asking him to come
and be his bodyguard.

Carlos, um, geolocated himself.
I mean, they...

Because they were tracking
the phone,

they were able to know that
he was in Khartoum.

The Israelis are the ones that did
the intercept

and immediately passed us
the information.

Billy Waugh was the ideal guy
for tracking down Carlos the Jackal.

He did, like, five or six tours
in Vietnam.

He was a very aggressive individual.

And I will make it very clear -

Billy did not want to turn him over
to anybody.

Billy wanted to kill him himself.

Khartoum was so miserable

that there was only two
or three nice hotels to go eat at,

to go drink at.
So that helped us narrow it down.

And one of the hits was

when they were
able to identify his bodyguard,

and Billy got his trusty camera out

and started taking photographs
of him as he came out.

And we had him under surveillance
when the French approached

the local government to say,
"We're coming to take this guy."

CROWD CHANTING

He was quite vain,

and therefore he decided

to get liposuction
to slim himself down.

He was an alcoholic,

he was a heavy drinker and a heavy
smoker. He was way overweight.

He fell asleep and during that time
the French came,

put him in a body bag, closed it,

and were heading to
the airport with him.

Allegedly, it is
in this very sensitive moment

when the French captors decide
to play a bit of a trick on Carlos,

and according to some sources,
they talk in Hebrew just to scare

the living hell out of Carlos
and making him think that they are

the Mossad and that he is
taken back to Israel,

much like Adolf Eichmann
was in 1960.

HE LAUGHS

After 20 years' pursuit, the Jackal
is surrendered by his protectors.

The countries which sheltered him
had enough of the man

whose name became
a byword for terrorism.

He certainly had become
an embarrassment to

the Syrian government, and I think
that's why they expelled him.

- NEWS REPORT:
- Before the jury left
the Paris courtroom,

Carlos addressed them with
a speech which lasted for hours.

- NEWS REPORT:
- Carlos saw this trial
as an opportunity

to parade his talents to the world.
In the end, though, he came across

as a pathetically
self-centred figure,

totally out of touch
with a changed world.

With luck, it's with this image
rather than with that of

the mythological super-terrorist
that from now on,

he'll be remembered.

Ultimately, you can see
that he just wants to be loved.

He wants to be loved by the Syrians,
by the Iraqis, by the East Germans.

And if he's not getting
their support,

you can see how fragile he is
and how quickly he crumbles

when he feels that not everyone
supports his mission

and admires him
the way he wants to be admired.

INTERVIEWER: