Carlos the Jackal

Carlos the Jackal's infamous career as a pay-for-hire terrorist ended six years ago with his arrest by French secret agents in the Sudan. Throughout the 1970s, he was public enemy number one, thought to be behind the hijacking of the El Al jet at Entebbe, Uganda and the attacks on the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic games. Years later he even was linked with the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Here, at last, is a full and authoritative portrait of this terrorist mastermind.

Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez, nicknamed 'Carlos the Jackal', was born the son of a wealthy Venezuelan Communist party leader - so dedicated to the cause that he named his three sons Vladimir, Ilyich and Lenin. Biographers David Yallop and John Follain describe how the overweight Venezuelan boy transformed himself into a swaggering, cold-blooded killer, taking part in guerrilla training in Cuba in his teens.

As a 20-year old, Sanchez went to Jordan where he underwent terrorist training with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Thereafter he became a mercenary, linked in particular with anti-Jewish attacks. However, the cause he was most devoted to was the heightening of his own reputation.

As the Jackal, Sanchez became one of the world's most dangerous revolutionary terrorists, his reputation superseded only by that of Abu Nidal. He reportedly worked for a host of regimes from Fidel Castro of Cuba to Saddam Hussein of Iraq, as well as scores of communist terrorist groups including the Baader-Meinhof Gang and the Italian Red Brigade.

Vincent Cannistraro, former director of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Unit, recounts in detail the hunt for the Jackal, and revisits the trail of death and destruction he caused.