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By Root 1089 0

Then the inspector decided to go up a gear by calling in Moukharbel to see what would happen when the two men were confronted with one another. That was a mistake. As the three agents and Moukharbel entered the apartment, Carlos pulled out a .38 Czech automatic and in seconds had shot Moukharbel and two of the agents dead. The lead DST agent was wounded in the neck. While British and French police put together the various links between the spate of assassinations and bombings both countries had recently experienced, Carlos slipped out of Marseilles on a fruit-boat bound for Algeria.

Carlos re-entered the spotlight when with remarkable audacity he and various Arab and German colleagues shot their way into the headquarters of OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum-Exporting Countries) in Vienna shortly before Christmas 1975. An Austrian policeman and an Iraqi security guard were clinically assassinated by a German woman terrorist. A Libyan economist who tried to wrestle Carlos’s submachine gun away from him was killed when the Jackal used his free hand to whip out a 9 mm automatic. These people meant business, and now they had eleven oil ministers cowering under their guns, including Iran’s Jamshid Amousagar and Saudi Arabia’s Ahmed Zaki Yamani, both of whom they intended to kill as representative of the most reactionary Gulf-region monarchies. For, in addition to a diffuse desire to strike at multinational capitalism, the raid was probably a warning from the progressive supporters of the Palestinians, that is Algeria, Libya and Iraq, to the conservative Arab states and the shah of Iran. The Austrian chancellor Kreisky rapidly caved in to terrorist demands which were backed up by threats to shoot a minister on the hour. One lighter moment came when an Iraqi mediator asked to know who they were dealing with. ‘We are revolutionaries, not criminals,’ replied Carlos, ‘we are the Arm of the Arab Revolution.’ ‘But you are not Arab,’ exclaimed a perplexed Riyadh al-Azzawi. Within hours, the Austrian interior minister was hugging Carlos farewell on the tarmac as the group and their hostages took off in a DC-9. Although the Nigerian minister felt sufficiently relaxed to ask the Jackal for his autograph - ‘Flight Vienna-Algiers 22/xii/75 - Carlos’ - Yamani and the Iranian spent the flight under the cloud of his threats to shoot them. The plane landed at Algiers and then took off for Tripoli. Carlos boasted that the Libyan prime minister would be there to greet them and to provide them with a fresh jet with the range to reach Baghdad. True to form, the Libyan prime minister slept soundly in his bed, while the jet failed to materialise. Back they returned to Algiers where, probably in exchange for a king’s ransom, they eventually released the eminent hostages and disappeared. A swelling folder of press cuttings about his crimes was as important to Carlos as his burgeoning bank accounts.13

In April 1975 unknown gunmen had tried to assassinate the leading Maronite in Lebanon, Pierre Gemayel, at a ceremony to consecrate a church. Before the morning was over, Maronite gunmen had massacred twenty-eight Palestinians as they journeyed by bus to Ain Rummaneh. Inter-communal fighting escalated, becoming all-out war when, not without reason, Gemayel accused the PLO of abusing Lebanese hospitality and called for a referendum regarding the Palestinians’ continued presence in his country. This prompted Kamal Jumblatt, the leader of a so-called Lebanese National Movement, to demand the removal of the right-wing authoritarian Maronite Phalangists from the coalition government. When the Maronites besieged three Palestinian refugee camps, massacring the inhabitants of Dbayeh, Palestinian guerrillas shelled and overran the small town of Damour, killing most of its inhabitants.

The responses of the wider Arab world to this conflict were disappointing when viewed from Arafat’s perspective. The Egyptian president Sadat’s preoccupation with a unilateral peace deal with Israel meant that Arafat could not bank on the support of the largest and most powerful