Carlos

I watched Carlos tonight, the recent film about Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, aka Carlos the Jackal. Coincidentally it was on this day in 1994 that he was handed over to the French after finally being tracked down to Sudan and literally bundled out of the country. I'd almost forgotten about the OPEC hostage business where he and his bunch of terrorists raided the oil conference in Vienna, killed three there and then flew with the others to Algiers and Tripoli, though I think it was actually Baghdad where the hostages were released, but the film presents it otherwise. And that seems to be the thing about Carlos. You never know what's fact or fiction. But one thing's for sure: he killed a lot of people, and ultimately for what? The image of him, fat and bored, in Khartoum waiting for the police to catch up with him, painted a pathetic picture. He's still in a French prison.