[4] After several bungled bombings, Ramírez Sánchez led the 1975 raid on the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) headquarters in Vienna, during which three people were killed.

[13] Ilyich attended high school at Liceo Fermin Toro [es] in Caracas and joined the youth movement of the Venezuelan Communist Party in 1959.

After attending the Third Tricontinental Conference in January 1966 with his father, Ilich reportedly spent the summer at Camp Matanzas, a guerrilla warfare school run by the Cuban DGI near Havana.

From Moscow, Ramírez Sánchez travelled to Beirut, Lebanon, where he volunteered for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in July 1970.

[18] When Sánchez joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1970, recruiting officer Bassam Abu Sharif gave him the code name "Carlos" because of his South American roots.

On completing guerrilla training, Sánchez (as he was now calling himself) played an active role for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in the north of Jordan during the Black September conflict of 1970, gaining a reputation as a fighter.

[21] He eventually left the Middle East to attend courses at the Polytechnic of Central London (now known as the University of Westminster), and apparently continued to work for the PFLP.

In 1973, Sánchez conducted a failed PFLP assassination attempt on Joseph Sieff, a Jewish businessman and vice president of the British Zionist Federation.

He later participated in two failed rocket propelled grenade attacks on El Al airplanes at Orly Airport near Paris on 13 and 17 January 1975.

[27] On 26 June 1975, Sánchez' PFLP contact, Lebanon-born Michel Moukharbal, was captured and interrogated by the French domestic intelligence agency, the DST.

In the years following the OPEC raid, Bassam Abu Sharif, another PFLP agent, and Klein claimed that Sánchez had received a large sum of money for the safe release of the Arab hostages and had kept it for his personal use.

Sánchez later told his lawyers that the money was paid by the Saudis on behalf of the Iranians and was "diverted en route and lost by the Revolution.

"[This quote needs a citation] Sánchez left Algeria for Libya and then Aden, where he attended a meeting of senior PFLP officials to justify his failure to execute two senior OPEC hostages – the finance minister of Iran, Jamshid Amuzgar, and the oil minister of Saudi Arabia, Ahmed Zaki Yamani.

His trainer and PFLP-EO leader Wadie Haddad expelled Carlos for not shooting hostages when PFLP demands were not met, thus failing his mission.

[31] Manuel Contreras, Gerhard Mertins, Sergio Arredondo and an unidentified Brazilian general traveled to Tehran in 1976 to offer a collaboration with the Shah regime to kill Carlos in exchange for a large sum of money.

[4] They provided him with an office and safe houses in East Berlin, a support staff of 75, and a service car, and allowed him to carry a pistol while in public.

[4] From here, Carlos is believed to have planned his attacks on several European targets, including the bombing of the Radio Free Europe offices in Munich in February 1981.

[32][33] On 16 February 1982, two of the group – Swiss terrorist Bruno Breguet and Carlos's wife Magdalena Kopp – were arrested in Paris.

[36] In August 1983, he also attacked the Maison de France in West Berlin, killing one man and injuring twenty-two other people.

His main cut-out for some of his financial resources, such as Gaddafi or George Habash, was the friend of his sister, Dietmar Clodo, a known German terrorist and the leader of the Panther Brigade of the PFLP.

Hungary expelled Carlos in late 1985, and he was refused sanctuary in Iraq, Libya and Cuba before he found limited support in Syria.

[38] After searching over two years for a country who would allow him to remain there, after a short stay in Jordan, Sanchez entered the Sudanese capital of Khartoum under the protection of Sheik Hassan al-Turabi, a powerful Muslim fundamentalist leader.

[38] In 1993, CIA contractor and former senior NCO of Military Assistance Command-Vietnam Studies and Observations Group Billy Waugh was tasked with finding Sanchez.

They established an observation post in an abandoned hospital across the street and watched him for four months, when they handed their intelligence to the French DST.

[40] French DST and DGSE offered the Sudanese government much needed communications equipment and even supplied them with satellite pictures of their enemy's positions.

In 2005, the European Court of Human Rights heard a complaint from Sánchez that his long years of solitary confinement constituted "inhuman and degrading treatment".

[57] Ramírez Sánchez denied any connection to the events in his 2011 trial, staging a nine-day hunger strike to protest his imprisonment conditions.

Three other members of Ramírez Sánchez's organization were tried in absentia at the same time: Johannes Weinrich, Christa Margot Fröhlich, and Ali Kamal Al-Issawi.

Only men and women armed with a total faith in the founding values of truth, justice, and fraternity will be prepared to lead the combat and deliver humanity from the empire of mendacity.

"[67] He also praised Osama bin Laden and the September 11 attacks, portraying it as a "lofty feat" to liberate the Islamic Holy Lands and advance the Palestinian cause.