Carlos The Jackal Called for Attacks on USA

by Selwyn Manning

Less than two weeks ago international terrorist Carlos the Jackal called from his French prison cell for worldwide attacks on Israel and the United States. This was perhaps a warning tragically overlooked.

Guerrilla leader, Venezuelan-born Carlos the Jackal, or Illich Ramirez Sanchez, on August 31 2001 called from his French jail cell for worldwide attacks on Israel and the United States in support of a Palestinian uprising.

He addressed an open letter responding to Israel's assassination of Palestinian leader Abu Ali Mustafa, whom Carlos described as a "former comrade-in-arms".

Carlos called for a "protracted people's war, without boundaries."

"The killers of Abu Ali Mustafa came from Tel Aviv, the orders came from Washington," Carlos wrote. "The Yankee should beware, " he said.

Mustafa, aged 64, was a founding member of the PLO and leader of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He was killed in an Israeli missile attack on his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Israel accused him of masterminding a wave of bombings during the Palestinian uprising against Israel that broke out September 2000.

After Israel's assassination of Mustafa, the United States said Israel's killings of Palestinian leaders were inflaming the conflict.

Carlos wrote his letter in English, was dated the day of Mustafa's killing and addressed to George Habash, the Damascus-based former head of the PFLP whom Mustafa succeeded in July last year.

Reuters reported how Carlos, who was held responsible for 80 killings in a terrorist campaign in the 1970s and 1980s supporting the PFLO, signed his letter using the Jackal's two noms de guerre - Carlos and the Arabic Salim - and with the words "Allahu Akhbar!" (God is Greater) and "Yours in Revolution".

Carlos led a six-strong squad of Palestinians and foreigners that burst into an Opec meeting in Vienna in December 1975 and took about 70 people, including 11 oil ministers, hostage.

Three people were killed in the raid and the Carlos gang later flew on to Algiers with 33 of the hostages, whom they released in stages there and in Tripoli before disappearing.

France abducted Carlos out of Sudan in 1994 and he was jailed for life in 1997 for the 1975 murder of two French secret agents.

He is now held in solitary confinement in the grim Sante prison in Paris, he makes occasional court appearances under heavy guard.

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