Wadi Haddad

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.

Cold War Prague hid its historic charms under a veil of grime and dilapidation. But, as we learn from this deeply researched and scholarly study, it was still a favoured destination for international terrorists, mostly Palestinians, after the 1968 Soviet invasion. They liked its hotels, its proximity to the West, its medical facilities, the tolerance and support of its security authorities and the quality of its light-arms manufacturing. Communist Czechoslovakia (CSSR) boasted relatively efficient security and intelligence services (generically referred to as the Stb). They were scrupulous record- keepers, and Stb archives, released after the Velvet Revolution with minimal expurgation, remain among the most complete of any former Warsaw Pact nation.