‘I always had a good life’: the boast of the 1970s’ most notorious terrorist
If you remember the 1970s you might also remember Carlos the Jackal, an international terrorist notorious for taking the Opec oil ministers hostage in Vienna in 1975. He also murdered two French policemen in Paris, later claiming to have personally murdered 83 people, plus another thousand killed on his orders during his terrorist career. But that may be wishful thinking. His name is not Carlos and he didn’t award himself the ‘Jackal’ sobriquet. That came about through the discovery of an arms cache he had hidden in a girlfriend’s flat in London. The Guardian reporter who broke the story noted that a briefcase full of weapons was placed next to a bookshelf displaying Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 thriller, The Day of the Jackal.
