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  • Published: 5 April 2012
  • ISBN: 9780241963029
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 298

Carlos: Portrait of a Terrorist

In Pursuit of the Jackal, 1975-2011



In pursuit of the Jackal, from 1975 to 2011.

This is the latest edition of Colin Smith's best selling - it was translated into Spanish, French, German and Finnish -1976 biography of the Venezuelan born terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez. Carlos - Portrait of a Terrorist is the result of painstaking research. Here is the full story of his transformation from spoilt playboy to 'The Jackal', once the favorite assassin of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Previously updated in 1995, after Carlos was sedated and sacked then handed over to French commandos in Khartoum, it has been revised following his latest 2011 conviction by a Paris court for a brutal series of terrorist bombings committed in 1982 and 1983. Smith's account blends perceptive eyewitness reportage of Carlos in action with the memories of friends, acquaintances and at least one lover.

  • Published: 5 April 2012
  • ISBN: 9780241963029
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 298

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Praise for Carlos: Portrait of a Terrorist

All the ingredients of a fictional espionage novel are here - sharply drawn characters, a fast-paced plot, violence, terror, intrigue and even the obligatory sex...A highly readable portrait of a committed revolutionary and compulsive bully

The New York Times

What matters in this immensely informative book is what it tells us about how terrorists operate rather than why

Richard Clutterbuck, Observer

The tentacles of terror, spreading out from the KGB via the military headquarters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine... is painstakingly and vividly portrayed by Colin Smith

Daily Mail, Don Anderson

A good solid, and very readable account of the way an overweight Venezuelan rich boy, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, was transformed by degrees into the lean, commanding figure in a white raincoat who had... the OPEC oil moguls literally prostrate on the carpet

Alexander McDonald, Birmingham Post

For years Ilich Sanchez played cat and mouse with the governments of the world... Now he's locked up in a French jail, from which he should never be released. In a classic piece of reportage, Colin Smith reconstructs Carlos's filthy career

Oxford Times