[A-List] France: target for Carlos the Jackal?

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

The jackal's eyes gleam
By B Raman
Asia Times: October 9 2002

It was Ilich Ramirez Sanchez - also known as Carlos the Jackal, aka Michel,
the Lebanese businessman, now in jail in France - who first borrowed from
international communism the "united front" tactics with which he formed a
constellation of like-minded terrorist groups aimed at targets associated
with capitalism and international Zionism.

Osama bin Laden, who lived contemporaneously with Carlos in Khartoum, Sudan,
until August 1994, emulated Carlos' united front tactics in the formation of
his International Islamic Front for jihad against the US and Israel in 1998.

The united front initially formed by Carlos comprised the Red Army faction
of Germany headed by Yohannes Weinrach, aka Peter, now in jail in Germany;
the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, then headed by George
Habash; another Palestinian group headed by one Ali, whose real name could
not be established, and splinter groups of the Kurdish movement. The leaders
of these groups had been given sanctuary by Syrian intelligence in Damascus,
and they were running training camps in Lebanon and Yemen, where Islamic
terrorist elements from many countries were trained by Carlos and Peter.

This group was in receipt of financial assistance from the intelligence
agencies of Libya, Iraq, East Germany and Yugoslavia, and travel documents,
including official and diplomatic passports, from the Yemeni authorities.
The training camps in Yemen were personally supervised by Peter.

In 1992-93, under US pressure, the Syrian authorities asked Carlos, Peter
and other non-Muslim members of the united front to leave their territory.
However, they allowed the Palestinian and other Muslim members to continue
to operate from Syrian territory. While Carlos shifted to Khartoum in Sudan,
Peter and others moved to Yemen. While living in Khartoum, Carlos divorced
his German wife, Magdalena Kopp, embraced Islam and married a local Muslim
woman.

French intelligence came to know of the presence of Carlos in Khartoum and,
after allegedly paying a huge sum to the Sudanese authorities, managed to
have Carlos heavily drugged while he was under medical treatment in a
hospital and flew him to Paris in August 1994. Subsequently, Peter was
caught by German intelligence with the cooperation of Yemeni intelligence.

After the arrest of Carlos and Peter, their united front withered away and
the Yemeni and other terrorists trained by them gravitated to bin Laden's
al-Qaeda. These elements nurse a strong anger against the French for the
drugging and kidnapping of Carlos and for his subsequent prosecution and
conviction.

There are some indications, reliable but not yet independently corroborated,
that it is these elements that were responsible for the incident in Yemen on
October 6 in which a boat laden with explosives is reported to have rammed a
French supertanker, causing a major fire but no loss of lives. (These
elements are also reportedly behind the explosion outside the Sheraton Hotel
in Karachi on May 8 that killed nine French experts working on an Agosta
submarine project.) Although Yemeni authorities continue to maintain that
the supertanker explosion was an accident and not a terrorist attack, other
reports indicate that it was indeed a terrorist strike.

The French vigorously cooperated with the US in the investigation of the
case of Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, and into the functioning of al-Qaeda
cells in France, but apart from this, their role in the war against
terrorism in Afghanistan has been minimal. They have been strongly
supportive of the PLO and critical of Israel and have opposed a military
strike against Iraq. Thus, apart from anger of the Muslim dregs of Carlos'
united front against the French for the reasons already mentioned above,
there is no other reason why Islamic terrorist groups operating in this
region (Afghanistan-Pakistan-Yemen) should target the French.

In an interview given to the Arab language daily Al Hayat of Cairo through
his lawyer on September 12 this year, Carlos claimed that the idea of using
an airplane to hit targets in the United States dated from as early as the
spring of 1991. According to Carlos, the suggestion came from the late Mir
Murtaza Bhutto of the Al Zulfiquar of Pakistan at a meeting of
"anti-imperialist organizations" at an undisclosed location as a response to
US strikes in Iraq. This is believed to be a reference to Carlos' united
front, which used to meet in Syrian or Lebanese territory. Murtaza Bhutto, a
brother of Benazir Bhutto, former Pakistani prime minister, then used to
live in Damascus. The followers of Murtaza Bhutto in Pakistan have strongly
denied this report and described it as disinformation planted by some
mischievous elements to create a misunderstanding between Benazir and the
US.

B Raman is Additional Secretary (ret), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of
India, and presently director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is
also a member of the National Security Advisory Board of the Government of
India, and was head of the counter-terrorism division of the Research and
Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency, from 1988 to August
1994.