It's gonna be impossible for me to keep this short. I was reading this book about Carlos the Jackal again, called Tracking the Jackal, and found the story of the 1975 OPEC ministers' kidnapping fascinating.
In 1975, a gang lead by Carlos took all of the attending members of an OPEC conference in Vienna hostage. The author of this book, David Yallop, points out that the blame for the mission, which progressed so erratically, was put on many different people... but the actual person behind it was Saddam Hussein.
Hussein was vice president of Iraq at the time. Iraq had been humiliated in previous years by Saudi Arabia; Iraqi members would try to criticize and strongarm the Saudis who, ruling OPEC, had forced them to apologize. Saddam wanted more money out of oil; Iraq was calling for a 30% price hike. The Saudis and Iranians, controlling OPEC at the time, were firmly set on 10%.
Hussein called up terrorist Wadi Haddad. A plan was formed: 1) kidnap all OPEC ministers, 2) have them flown through every major Arab state. At each stop, the minister of the country would be forced to read a statement against Israel. This would deflect the blame of which country was behind the mission, if each country looked like a possible aggressor. 3) when the plane landed in Aden, the Iranian and Saudi ministers were to be shot.
Haddad contacted Carlos to lead the mission. Only one problem; Carlos was really fat. According to a source of Yallop's, Red Army Faction member Peter Boock, he was using two chairs to sit on at the timeand the Palestinians who trained him joked about him needing a bra. They had to put Carlos through weight-loss "training camp". A gang was then organized:
Gabrielle Krocher-Tiedemann- a violent mercenary from Germany, she had been training in Yemen under Haddad,
Hans Klein- a baffling choice; he was known in the German underworld as "klein Klein" i.e. "small Klein" a reputation for small-time work. During training, when Carlos said anyone who resisted orders would be shot, Klein balked that it "sounded like too much shooting".
"Khalid"- one of the three Palestinian accomplices and Carlos second-in-command.
In the time preceding the Vienna meeting, Carlos, already internationally wanted, didn't exactly make himself inconspicuous: he grew a beard and started wearing a trenchcoat and beret. The vehicle of choice for the gang, bringing their bags of guns, grenades, and enough explosive to destroy the building, was not a rental car or stolen car but public streetcar, a Viennese tram.
The door guards reaction, upon seeing this trenchcoated gang dragging heavy gym bags into an OPEC meeting was...to do nothing. A gang member said "Hello" to him; he said hi back.
Inside the building was the standard security for a conference: two cops. The gang walked past them up the stairs.
Guns were drawn and the people upstairs were rounded up. Tiedemann killed a cop and an Iraqi guard who rushed her; Carlos's machine gun was almost stripped by a Libyan official, who he then shot several times at point blank range. (This was the reason, in his interview with Yallop, that Qaddafi said he wanted Carlos tried and executed in Libya.)
The ministers were divided up into "friends, neutrals, and enemies." Carlos spent much time chatting with Venezuelan minister Valentin Hernandez Acosta, an acquaintance of his mother's. Carlos spent much of the mission trying to charm him. He even gave him a letter to deliver to his mother when he went back to Venezuela, but later in the mission he would also show him the bullets he would've used to shoot him, should everyone need to be killed. Carlos promised, though, "Dr. Hernandez, I promise you; you would have been the very last person to be shot."
Klein was shot when trading fire with police who entered the building's first floor. When taken away to get medical attention, he would use the alias "Angie," after the Rolling Stones song...when the gang finally got their bus and plane the next morning, preventing their need to blow up the whole building with everyone in it, they would insist on Klein re-joining them despite his bullet wounds.
The plane's first destination, due to some savvy planning and strategy by President Boumedienne of Algeria and the Viennese leaders, was Algiers. They had some strange plans in store for Carlos's gang...
continued next journal
In 1975, a gang lead by Carlos took all of the attending members of an OPEC conference in Vienna hostage. The author of this book, David Yallop, points out that the blame for the mission, which progressed so erratically, was put on many different people... but the actual person behind it was Saddam Hussein.
Hussein was vice president of Iraq at the time. Iraq had been humiliated in previous years by Saudi Arabia; Iraqi members would try to criticize and strongarm the Saudis who, ruling OPEC, had forced them to apologize. Saddam wanted more money out of oil; Iraq was calling for a 30% price hike. The Saudis and Iranians, controlling OPEC at the time, were firmly set on 10%.
Hussein called up terrorist Wadi Haddad. A plan was formed: 1) kidnap all OPEC ministers, 2) have them flown through every major Arab state. At each stop, the minister of the country would be forced to read a statement against Israel. This would deflect the blame of which country was behind the mission, if each country looked like a possible aggressor. 3) when the plane landed in Aden, the Iranian and Saudi ministers were to be shot.
Haddad contacted Carlos to lead the mission. Only one problem; Carlos was really fat. According to a source of Yallop's, Red Army Faction member Peter Boock, he was using two chairs to sit on at the timeand the Palestinians who trained him joked about him needing a bra. They had to put Carlos through weight-loss "training camp". A gang was then organized:
Gabrielle Krocher-Tiedemann- a violent mercenary from Germany, she had been training in Yemen under Haddad,
Hans Klein- a baffling choice; he was known in the German underworld as "klein Klein" i.e. "small Klein" a reputation for small-time work. During training, when Carlos said anyone who resisted orders would be shot, Klein balked that it "sounded like too much shooting".
"Khalid"- one of the three Palestinian accomplices and Carlos second-in-command.
In the time preceding the Vienna meeting, Carlos, already internationally wanted, didn't exactly make himself inconspicuous: he grew a beard and started wearing a trenchcoat and beret. The vehicle of choice for the gang, bringing their bags of guns, grenades, and enough explosive to destroy the building, was not a rental car or stolen car but public streetcar, a Viennese tram.
The door guards reaction, upon seeing this trenchcoated gang dragging heavy gym bags into an OPEC meeting was...to do nothing. A gang member said "Hello" to him; he said hi back.
Inside the building was the standard security for a conference: two cops. The gang walked past them up the stairs.
Guns were drawn and the people upstairs were rounded up. Tiedemann killed a cop and an Iraqi guard who rushed her; Carlos's machine gun was almost stripped by a Libyan official, who he then shot several times at point blank range. (This was the reason, in his interview with Yallop, that Qaddafi said he wanted Carlos tried and executed in Libya.)
The ministers were divided up into "friends, neutrals, and enemies." Carlos spent much time chatting with Venezuelan minister Valentin Hernandez Acosta, an acquaintance of his mother's. Carlos spent much of the mission trying to charm him. He even gave him a letter to deliver to his mother when he went back to Venezuela, but later in the mission he would also show him the bullets he would've used to shoot him, should everyone need to be killed. Carlos promised, though, "Dr. Hernandez, I promise you; you would have been the very last person to be shot."
Klein was shot when trading fire with police who entered the building's first floor. When taken away to get medical attention, he would use the alias "Angie," after the Rolling Stones song...when the gang finally got their bus and plane the next morning, preventing their need to blow up the whole building with everyone in it, they would insist on Klein re-joining them despite his bullet wounds.
The plane's first destination, due to some savvy planning and strategy by President Boumedienne of Algeria and the Viennese leaders, was Algiers. They had some strange plans in store for Carlos's gang...
continued next journal
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Thank you for the bday wishes, monkey!