They demanded that Furuya be released from jail and that a Boeing 707 be placed at their disposal. While the demands were considered, Furuya was removed from his cell and taken under armed guard by members of France’s Brigade Anti-Commando, to Schipol airport in Amsterdam to await the outcome of the negotiations. The Brigade were under strict orders to execute Furuya if any of the hostages were harmed, an order that came directly from the French Prime Minister, Jacques Chirac.
While the negotiations continued, Carlos devised a plan that he hoped would force the release of the terrorists. On a busy Sunday afternoon he entered the trendy Deux-Magots caf? and made his way to the first floor balcony and threw a fragmentation grenade down into the crowd that milled around the boutiques on the ground floor.
Carlos left just before the blast scattered hundreds of lethal fragments through the crowd killing two and injuring thirty-four innocent shoppers.
Two days later, the French government agreed to the terrorist’s demands. They not only released Furuya and supplied the jet but also paid a $300,000 ransom. They have since insisted that the grenade attack at Deux-Magots had no bearing on their decision. Regardless of the lack of importance placed on the attack, it succeeded in attracting Haddad’s attention with the result that he “upgraded” Carlos and ordered him and Moukharbal to seize an El Al jet at Orly airport in December 1974. Finally, Carlos had been selected to take part in “high-profile” operations. Unfortunately for Carlos the planned attack coincided with a strike by El Al staff, which prevented any Israeli aircraft from landing in Paris. Carlos, anxious to prove himself, was told to sit and wait for the strike to end. Finally on January 13 1975, Carlos and Johannes Weinrich, a new accomplice, were sent into action.
Johannes Weinrich (Yallop)
Shortly after midday, the terrorists were sitting in a rented car at the side of an airport access road waiting for an El Al flight to take off. The plan was to wait until the aircraft was in the air and shoot it down with an RPG-7, a Russian made bazooka.
At the appointed time, Weinrich stood at the side of the road and shouldered the weapon and took aim at the approaching El Al 707. He was clearly visible to a Lufthansa employee who stood at his desk less than twenty meters away and an El Al security guard on a nearby rooftop. When the plane was 130 meters away, Weinrich fired but the rocket missed its target and slammed into a parked car. The warhead did not explode.
The recoil of the second shot, fired in haste, pushed Weinrich and the bazooka backwards smashing their cars windscreen. The rocket streaked away toward the airport and passed through a Yugoslav DC9, which was parked off the side of the tarmac, before hitting a building that was used as a kitchen. Fortunately the building was empty at the time of the attack. Following the failed attack, Carlos and Weinrich sped away to a nearby cemetery where they dumped the vehicle and switched to another, leaving the bazooka behind. A later phone call to the Reuters news agency in Paris claimed responsibility for the attack in the name of the Mohamed Boudia Commando. The person making the call promised that, “Next time we will hit our target.”
While the security around Orly was being strengthened with additional gendarmes and riot police, Carlos and Moukharbal were laying plans for their next attempt. Four days after the first attack, obviously undaunted by the increased security, Carlos and three other Palestinian guerrillas were at the airport “rehearsing” for the next strike. The following Sunday the terrorists returned to the airport and after retrieving another, less powerful bazooka from it’s hiding place in a public toilet, they ran out to an observation terrace and prepared to open fire on an El Al jumbo jet that was nearby. Before they could get into position, a security officer on an adjoining rooftop opened fire with a submachine gun. As the crowd ran for cover, one terrorist fired his pistol into the air and threw a grenade. The terrorist with the RPG took the weapon from under his coat and aimed it at the jumbo which by this time was 400 meters away preparing for take off, too far for an effective shot.
To make their escape, the terrorists ran into the passenger lounge firing their pistols and throwing grenades. Carlos was not among them as he had slipped away when the shooting had started. Shortly after they entered the lounge they were intercepted by a security patrol. After a short gunfight, eight people, including one of the security officers, lay seriously wounded while the terrorists selected hostages and barricaded themselves in a toilet. In all, they succeeded in taking ten hostages including a priest, a four-year-old girl and a pregnant woman. Ten hours later, after terse negotiations, the French government yielded and supplied a Boeing 707 to fly the Palestinians unharmed to Baghdad in return for the hostages. Annoyed by yet another failed attack, Carlos and Moukharbal flew to London and on to Paris to lie low and make plans for the next phase of their campaign.
While Carlos remained in Paris and spent his time finding new locations to stash his growing arsenal of weapons, Moukharbal was making regular trips to Popular Front headquarters in Beirut. On June 7 1975, during one such trip, the Lebanese police arrested Moukharbal at Beirut airport, as he was about to board a flight to return to Paris. In his possession they found detailed notes on the movements of several prominent politicians and business identities in Paris and London. Anxious to connect Moukharbal to terrorist activities, the Beirut police asked a former DST officer who was resident in Lebanon, to conduct the interrogation. After questioning the prisoner for nearly two days, Jean-Paul Mauriat, learned that Moukharbal was a member of the Popular Front and worked for a man called George Habash. During the interview, he also mentioned another man he called Nourredine. When asked for further information, Moukharbal told them that the man in question was a “hit man, a killer.”
Moukharbal was released on June 13 and put on a plane to Paris, unaware that an undercover Lebanese policeman was tailing him. When the flight arrived in Paris, the Lebanese officer pointed Moukharbal out to a DST team waiting at the airport. Moukharbal was then followed as he caught a cab to Latin Quarter and entered a small apartment building at 9 Rue Toullier. A short time later, Moukharbal left the apartment with a heavily built man with dark hair who carried a suitcase. The DST agents took several photographs of the men but called off the surveillance shortly after.
On June 20, supposedly under constant observation, Moukharbal left Paris and traveled to London. Realizing too late that their man had slipped away, the DST notified London’s Special Branch and had him picked up and sent back to Paris. On his arrival at Calais, Moukharbal was taken into custody and questioned by members of the Renseignments Generaux, the French domestic intelligence section. Initially, Moukharbal refused to cooperate with his captors but seven days later, after being threatened with expulsion to Beirut and told that his superiors were not impressed that he had talked to the Lebanese police, Moukharbal cracked and gave them information regarding Nourredine. One piece of information that he did not reveal was the fact that Nourredine was actually his second in command, Carlos.
9 Rue Toullier (Yallop)
He told them that Nourredine often visited 9 Rue Toullier, the home of one of his girlfriends. Acting on the information, Commissaire Herranz and three other officers immediately drove to the address with Moukharbal in the hope that the man might still be there. At the time of their arrival, Carlos was entertaining several Venezuelan students and was partially drunk. When the police knocked at the door of the apartment, Carlos was in the bathroom with one of the girls, showing her an automatic machine pistol, one of the many weapons that he had stashed there.
The police attempted to question Carlos but he resisted and threatened to call his embassy to complain. The talk became heated and Carlos went back to the bathroom, retrieved his weapon and slid it down the back of his trousers. Re- entering the room, Carlos offered the policemen drinks and asked one of the women to play a song. The atmosphere in the tiny flat became more relaxed until one of the other police officers entered the room with Moukharbal. When asked if he could identify anyone in the room he raised his arm and pointed at Carlos.
Carlos immediately drew his machine pistol and shot Moukharbal in the neck. Next he swung the gun towards Herranz and shot him, also in the neck. With deadly precision, Carlos shot the two remaining detectives before making his escape into the street via an adjoining apartment. Later, a badly wounded Herranz, was helped into a taxi by two of the students and taken to hospital, he was the only survivor. Incredibly, the attack had been so quick and deadly that the bodies of Moukharbal and the two detectives lay stacked on top of one another. Ironically, prior to the shooting, the French authorities had no knowledge of Carlos or his activities but the eyewitness account, provided by Herranz, gave them enough information to initiate one of the biggest manhunts in history.
Within days of the attack, while the authorities were busy rounding up anyone who had even the slightest connection to him, Carlos made a late night visit to the home of an old girlfriend and retrieved several documents including a Chilean passport that he used to make his escape to Beirut via Brussels.
On his return to Beirut, Carlos was feted as the conquering hero for his achievements in Paris. He was able to convince Haddad that he had executed Moukharbal for betraying the cause; a fact that was later confirmed when a former Mossad agent revealed that Moukharbal had been acting as a double agent for the Israelis since 1973 and had provided the information that had resulted in the death of Mohamed Boudia.
Wilfred Bose
Having proved himself in Haddad’s eyes, Carlos was encouraged to select a new team to assist him with an attack that was not only ambitious but also highly dangerous. Carlos traveled to Frankfurt and selected two West Germans, Wilfred Bose and Joachim Klein. They were shocked when he informed them that they were about to embark on a mission that would strike a resounding blow for the Palestinian cause; an attack on the headquarters of the Organisation of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna. The goal was to take over the conference, planned for December 1975, by force and kidnap all the government ministers in attendance and hold them for ransom with the exception of Arabia’s Sheik Yamani and Iran’s Jamshid Amouzegar, who were to be executed during the attack.
Gabriele Tiedemann
He allayed their initial skepticism assuring them that he had advance knowledge of the security arrangements at the conference, which were lax. Four others made up the remainder of the team. The first was Gabrielle Krocher-Tiedemann, a German woman, who had been jailed two years earlier after shooting a policeman when he attempted to arrest her for stealing number plates in a car park. The other three were two Palestinians and a Lebanese known only by their code-names, Joseph, Khalid and Yussef.
Having assembled his team and organized the weapons they would need, Carlos flew to Aden for a final briefing from Haddad. He returned to Europe via Switzerland and took a train to Austria where he booked himself into a plush suite at the Vienna Hilton. The rest of the team had to make do with less luxurious accommodation and criticized Carlos for his “bourgeois lifestyle.” Unperturbed, Carlos insisted that his choice of accommodation was necessary for his own security.
Although Carlos still retained his love of good food, fine wines and plush surroundings, he no longer resembled the well-groomed playboy of his earlier years.
In the months prior to the OPEC raid, he had grown his hair and sideburns, cultivated a goatee beard and wore a black beret; just like his childhood hero Che Guevara.
After renting two small flats on the outskirts of Vienna, the team carried out a surveillance of OPEC headquarters and researched the records of previous conferences. Carlos later moved out of the hotel and relocated his team to a larger flat closer to the city center. At Carlos’s insistence, team meetings were held in luxury restaurants whenever possible. At one such meeting, Carlos informed his team that, during the attack, any of the hostages or bystanders who resisted or caused any problem would be executed on the spot. Klein disagreed arguing that such a move would only serve to create an uncontrolled panic. The pair argued the point for over two hours before they realised that the other patrons in the restaurant could hear their raised voices, and the details of their plan, clearly.
On Friday 19 December, Carlos left the flat to meet with his contact, allegedly a member of the secret service for one of the OPEC ministers. A short time later, Carlos returned carrying two large bags containing M-16 rifles, P38 revolvers, Skorpion machine pistols and fifteen kilos of explosives. Klein’s Revolutionary Cell later supplied another suitcase full of weapons. After spending most of the evening cleaning and preparing the weapons, the team was ready.
On the following Sunday morning, Carlos, Klein, Krocher-Tiedemann and the three Arabs, left the flat carrying the weapons and explosives in sports bags. Bose did not take part in the attack. After a short tram ride they arrived at the seven story building that housed the OPEC headquarters, at half past eleven. Carlos entered the buildings lobby first and, after greeting the two young policemen at the door, he beckoned for the rest of the team to follow. In the hallway, he asked a small group of journalists if the OPEC meeting was still on. When they replied in the affirmative, Carlos thanked them and led his party up the stairs to the first floor where the meeting room was located.
Once they reached the top of the staircase, the terrorists removed their weapons and ran towards the reception area outside the doors of the conference room and started shooting. Two Austrian police inspectors, Josef Janda and Anton Tichler who stood guard outside the doors leading into the meeting room, provided the only security on the floor. On reaching the reception area, Klein split from the main group to take control of the switchboard. As he approached, Edith Heller, the receptionist, dialed the police and managed to report the attack before Klein fired a bullet into the telephone handset she was holding next to her head.
Undaunted, Heller picked up another handset and attempted to dial. Klein then turned his gun on the switchboard and emptied his remaining bullets into it.
Meanwhile, Carlos and the rest of the team had entered the hallway that led to the meeting chamber. As they approached the two security guards, Inspector Tichler grabbed the barrel of Carlos’s machine pistol and attempted to disarm him, but Carlos was too strong for the sixty-year-old policeman and wrenched it from his grasp. Krocher-Tiedemann then walked behind Tichler and asked him if he was a policeman. When he replied yes, she fired a bullet into the back of his neck that tore a hole through his throat. Fatally wounded, he was then placed in an elevator and sent to the ground floor.
Returning from the elevator, Krocher-Tiedemann arrived in time to see a large man backing out of the reception area. She immediately ran to him and pushed her pistol against his chest. The man, a plain-clothed Iraqi security guard, grabbed her tightly and squeezed her against his chest. The pair struggled for a short time until Krocher-Tiedemann managed to draw a second pistol and fired a shot into the man’s brain.
While Krocher-Tiedemann was carrying out her second execution in as many minutes, Carlos grabbed inspector Janda and forced him along the corridor towards the inner office. Unaware that Janda was a policeman; Carlos pushed his prisoner into an abandoned office and locked the door. Janda immediately found a phone and called his headquarters. His message was short and to the point – “Criminal Officer Janda, Department One. OPEC attack. Shooting with machine-pistols.” The urgency of the call was intensified by the sounds of gunfire from the hallway as Carlos executed a Libyan economist who had tried to disarm him.
After shooting his latest victim four times, Carlos entered the conference room, firing a volley of shots into the ceiling. As the occupants ducked for cover, Carlos identified Sheik Yamani and approached him speaking to him in a sarcastic manner. He then approached Valentin Hernandez Acosta, the Venezuelan oil minister and engaged him in friendly conversation. It was at that time that Yamani realised that his masked attacker was the terrorist Carlos. The realization came as a shock to Yamani as he was aware that Carlos had previously plotted to assassinate him.
While Carlos and his accomplice were questioning their prisoners, a special detachment of police had arrived at the building in response to Inspector Janda’s phone call. Three of the members of Vienna’s special command unit entered the foyer of the building to be greeted by the site of Inspector Tichler’s body protruding from the floor of an elevator. The men dressed in helmets and bullet-proof vests and carrying Uzi sub-machine guns, then made their way up the stairs towards the first floor reception area only to be greeted by a volley of bullets from Klein and Joseph who were covering the reception area. Hampered by poor lighting and a pall of gun smoke, the police returned fire, wounding Klein in the stomach and thigh with a third bullet and knocking his weapon from his hand. During the exchange the leader of the police squad, Kurt Leopolder was shot in the buttocks. Seemingly unaffected by his wounds, Klein shouted, “Get out or everyone will be killed,” and prepared to throw a grenade towards the police. Fumbling the throw, the grenade landed just four meters away from where he stood. As it rolled across the floor everyone dived for cover and the grenade exploded, peppering the walls with metal shards.