Jackal: The Complete Story of the Legendary Terrorist, Carlos the Jackal - Softcover

Follain, John

3.59

261 ratings by Goodreads

9781611450262: Jackal: The Complete Story of the Legendary Terrorist, Carlos the Jackal

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1611450268 ISBN 13: 9781611450262

Publisher: Arcade, 2011

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On an August night in 1994, French counterespionage officers seized the world’s most wanted terrorist from a villa in Sudan. After more than two decades on the run, Carlos the Jackal” had finally been caged. For years he had murdered and bombed his way to notoriety. Jackal is the definitive biography of this self- proclaimed professional revolutionary,” ladies’ man, and cold-blooded killer. Setting his story against the larger political picture of the time, it exposes how the Soviet bloc and some Arab regimes sponsored terrorist actions for their own ends during the cold war.

Jackal reveals the web of intrigue, blackmail, and fear that guaranteed Carlos’s survival, the helping hand of Colonel Qadhafi, and the true nature of the Kremlin Connections.” John Follain shows how the CIA and French intelligence compromised their own statutes by giving agents progressively freer license with murder and collateral damage in order to capture him. A cautionary tale of governments that fostered the image of an invincible criminal mastermind in reality a pawn in the chilling cold war chess game between East and West Jackal also provides fascinating insight into the making and mind of the world’s most wanted terrorist.

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Review:

Ilich Ramirez Sanchez once called himself a "professional revolutionary." During a career in international terrorism lasting more than two decades, Sanchez--better known as Carlos the Jackal--murdered 83 people by his own count, once held several dozen oil ministers hostage during an OPEC meeting, and "freelanced" for, among others, Muammar al-Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, and the Italian Red Brigade. Before his eventual capture in 1994 and subsequent trial and imprisonment in France, the Jackal's reputation as a "terrorist's terrorist" was unsurpassed. Dozens of hijackings, bombings, and assassinations were blamed on him, whether or not he was involved (which led him to stand before a French court and accuse everyone within view of libel).

From his fervent Communist upbringing in Venezuela, Carlos was set upon the revolutionary path at an early age. He was allegedly given training in guerilla warfare in Cuba while still a teenager, and soon thereafter studied in the Soviet Union. Jackal breathlessly follows Sanchez's rapid rise up the world's ladder of professional brigands and cutthroats and his international playboy lifestyle, but seldom reveals a private side to the man--perhaps, one guesses, because Carlos the Jackal never had the time or inclination to cultivate one. Follain attempts to make an icon of Carlos ("I will stay inside jail forever or I will be shot dead if I get out," he mused to a reporter while imprisoned in France) in a valiant effort to lend a moral hook to his story, but, as he finally admits, "revolution for Carlos meant a state of mindless euphoria, chasing after women, and luxurious living." --Tjames Madison

About the Author:

John Follain is an investigative journalist and author. He was a correspondent for Reuters in Paris from 1993 to 1997, where he researched and wrote the Carlos story. He is now bureau chief of the Associated Press in Rome.

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