Sánchez, Ilich Ramírez (1949–)

The Venezuelan-born Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, widely known as Carlos the Jackal, was involved in some of the most spectacular terrorist incidents of the 1970s and 1980s. He eluded police capture for more than 20 years.

Ilich Ramírez Sánchez was born on October 12, 1949. His parents presented a study in contrasts: his mother, Elba Maria Sánchez, was a deeply religious woman who enjoyed high society; his father, José Altagracia Ramírez Navas, was a fervent Marxist. He named his sons Vladimir, Ilich, and Lenin, after V.I. Lenin, the leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution. From the moment they were born, José Ramírez intended his sons to be revolutionaries. Despite his Marxist beliefs, José Ramírez maintained a successful law practice, and the family was well off and moved in the upper circles of Venezuelan society.

Sánchez attended Fermin Toro Lycée, a secondary school famous for its leftist radicalism. He participated in street demonstrations and riots in the streets of Caracas in the mid-1960s and is rumored to have taken guerrilla training in Cuba in 1966. Later that year, concerned about rising violence and political unrest in Venezuela, his mother took her sons to London to continue their schooling. In 1968, José Ramírez arranged for Sánchez to attend Patrice Lumumba Friendship University in Moscow.

Lumumba University was not a typical center of academics, as its purpose was to train future terrorists and revolutionary leaders for the Third World. Subjects included communist doctrine and covert operations. Discipline was strict, and Carlos chafed under it, slighting his studies in favor of partying and womanizing. In early 1970 he was forced to leave Moscow.