Jackal
The Complete Story of the Legendary Terrorist, Carlos the Jackal
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
On an August night in 1994 French counterespionage officers seized the world's most wanted terrorist from a villa in the 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, evading capture thanks to powerful backers and the blunders of Western secret services. 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 certain Arab regimes sponsored terrorist actions for their own ends during the cold war. A cautionary tale of governments that fostered the image of an invincible criminal mastermind - who was 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Biographies come in various degrees of difficulty: there are subjects about whom much is known and those about whom little is known. And then there are a handful of subjects such as the international terrorist Carlos the Jackal, whose life has been based on elaborate deception. Carlos, born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez 49 years ago in Venezuela, led a childhood and youth so outlandish that even a novelist might have shunned such incredible material. While still in his teens, Carlos achieved the status of a highly trained revolutionary with the encouragement of his leftist father. Linking himself to Palestinian terrorists, Carlos began accepting murderous assignments throughout the world, killing innocent people because of their religious affiliations or their political views. After detailing Carlos's crimes, Follain turns to the campaign by various intelligence agencies (including the CIA) to capture the terrorist, a campaign that resulted in his capture in the Sudan by French counterespionage agents in 1994. (He is currently imprisoned in France.) French journalist Follain (A Dishonoured Society) can be applauded for attempting such an ambitious project, but huge (if often understandable) gaps in his research, far-fetched psychologizing and clunky writing sabotage this biography of a saboteur. FYI: Carlos is identified as "the most feared international terrorist" of the 20th century in Jay Robert Nash's Terrorism in the 20th Century: A Narrative Encyclopedia from the Anarchists through the Weathermen to the Unabomber. (M. Evans, paper 456p ; Dec.)
