Terrorist Carlos

Born in Venezuela, the son of a prominent Marxist lawyer, Carlos was named Ilich after the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Ilich Lenin.  Drawn by communist ideology, Carlos studied at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow.  In 1970, he was recruited by a Marxist Palestinian terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP.  He was trained in Lebanon under terrorist leader Wadi Haddad.

After Haddad's death in 1978, Carlos helped organize three terrorist groups -- the PFLP Special Command, the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction, and the 15 May Organization.  Around 1978, Carlos organized another terrorist network -- the Organization of the Armed Arab Struggle.  Over the years, Carlos lived in Syria and Libya, and received protection from several Soviet-bloc governments.

Carlos is wanted for numerous terrorist attacks carried out in the 1970s and 1980s.  They include the wounding of a British millionaire in 1973; the bombing of a Paris drugstore in 1974; the 1975 killing of two French intelligence officers investigating Carlos's failed rocket attack on an El Al plane at a Paris airport; a 1975 attack on OPEC headquarters in Vienna, in which three people were killed and 11 oil ministers were taken hostage; the 1982 bombing of a Paris passenger train that killed five people; and railroad bombings around Marseilles that killed six people and wounded 80 in 1983.