Criminal Masterminds

by Anne Williams

  After splitting from MAK in 1988, bin Laden formed al-Qaeda, a specifically Arab nationalist organization with its own army of 12,000 armed men. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, bin Laden offered the Saudi government his army, but instead, the Saudis accepted help from the US government. This absolutely incensed bin Laden, who had a loathing for the values of Western democracy, and firmly believed that US troops should never be allowed on to Saudi Arabian soil. From this time on, he publicly denounced the Saudi royal family, and he was forced to become an exile from Saudi Arabia as a result.

  The ‘fatwa’

  Bin Laden’s next port of call was Khartoum, Sudan, where he set up a new base for his operations. These included training camps, which recruited soldiers from all over the world and educated them both in Islamic law and military strategy. An astute businessman, bin Laden also set up a large road construction company and agricultural corporation in Sudan, assisted by friends in high places, such as the Sudanese political leader, Hassan al Turabi. However, even though he had the protection of Turabi, bin Laden was eventually forced to leave Sudan, under pressure from the international community.

  Forced into exile once again, bin Laden now decided to move to the heart of the fundamentalist world, to the new Afghan government of the Taliban, whose headquarters were at Kandahar. Here, he not only bankrolled new regime but was suspected of financing and organizing a series of horrific anti-Western terror attacks and atrocities around the world, including the Luxor massacre in Egypt in 1997.

  In 1998, along with one of the leaders of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden issued a ‘fatwa’, or religious edict, threatening to kill all Americans and their allies, whether civilian or military. He declared that it was the duty of every good Muslim to do this, so as to liberate the Muslim people. There followed, in 1998, a series of US embassy bombings across the world. Bin Laden was held responsible and US president Bill Clinton ordered that his assets should be frozen. He also signed an order authorizing bin Laden’s arrest and offered a five-million dollar reward for his capture. The same year, the United States launched a cruise missile attack on Afghanistan. Bin Laden escaped unharmed, but the missile killed nineteen others, causing controversy over the US action.

  Disaster strikes

  The worst was still to come, however. On the morning of September 11, in Manhattan, the world watched in horror as two planes crashed into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center, setting fire to the buildings and bringing them crashing down. On the same morning, another hijacked aeroplane crashed into the Pentagon headquarters at Arlington County, Virginia, destroying part of the building, and a fourth hijacked plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, killing the entire crew and passengers, as well as the hijackers themselves.

  The fact that the terrorists had managed to destroy some of the greatest symbols of Western power and economic might, in the heart of New York and Washington, killing around 3,000 people, was extraordinary. When news emerged that the suicide bombers had simply boarded the planes armed only with box cutters, it became clear that the West was now under threat from a very extremist group that would stop at nothing. Bin Laden immediately came under suspicion, and although he initially denied involvement in the events, he later admitted his involvement.

  Aftermath

  After these events, which are now referred to as 9/11, a special commission was set up to enquire into what had happened. Eventually, after three years of investigation, the report identified nineteen hijackers, all of whom belonged to Al-Qaeda. The terrorists mostly came from Saudi Arabia, but also from the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Egypt, and had entered the United States earlier that year. They had been trained by the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, and the plan had the full approval and backing of Osama bin Laden.

  Today, bin Laden is still in hiding, and is currently thought to be living somewhere on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Rumours abound as to his whereabouts and state of health. He suffers from a kidney disease, which needs to be treated with highly technological medical equipment, and is rumoured to be unwell. In recent years, several sightings of him have been reported, but none of them have yet led to his capture. According to some reports, he may even have died, either of his illness, or from a disease such as typhoid. But whatever the true story, the fact remains that, the mastermind behind the atrocities of 9/11 and many other bombings around the world has still not been captured and brought to justice. In addition, the events of 9/11 have plunged the West into increasing disputes with the Arab nations, and the conflicts look set to continue well into the new millennium.

  Carlos the Jackal

  Carlos the Jackal was the name given to Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, a Venezuelan national who masterminded some of the most outrageous terror attacks of the twentieth century. Like Abu Nidal, Sanchez began his career as something of an idealist, but soon lost all sense of his political cause and began to kill at random, out of bloodlust and greed. During his long career of terror attacks, he also emerged as a man who loved to show off his fame and wealth, and who thoroughly enjoyed his position as one of the world’s most notorious criminals. For over two decades, he terrorised the general public of many countries in Europe with a series of brutal, senseless attacks, until he was driven underground and eventually handed over to the authorities for trial in France. Sanchez was convicted of three murders and given a life sentence for these crimes, but to date, he still has not been tried for all the attacks that he masterminded.

  Terrorist education

  Born in 1949 in Caracas, Venezuela, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez was named after the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilich Lenin. (In fact, the three sons of the family each took one of the the famous Russian leader’s names: Vladimir was the eldest, Ilich was the middle son, and Lenin the youngest.) His father was a millionaire, a lawyer who had made a fortune, but at the same time espoused extremely left-wing views. Sanchez grew up in this contradictory environment, being educated by left-wing militants while living in the lap of luxury. Some commentators have argued that this strange dichotomy, coupled with the instabilities of his parents’ relationship, may have caused Sanchez to become violent in later life, but that remains a matter of conjecture.

  As a child, young Ilich attended a local school in Caracas. In his teenage years, encouraged by his father, he joined the youth movement of the national communist party. He learned to speak Arabic, Russian, English and French, as well as his native Spanish, which aided him in his later career as an international criminal, as he often posed as a language teacher in the different countries he visited. In 1966, he attended a training camp for guerrilla warfare in Cuba, learning some of the ideology and skills that were to shape his adult life as a terrorist.

  ‘Carlos the Jackal’

  In 1966, Sanchez’ parents divorced, and he moved with his mother and brothers to London, England, where he continued his education. As a young man, he enrolled at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where he came into contact with the Communist Party there. From the start, he made it clear that his political interests lay in the problems of the Middle East, and thus he began to carve out a career for himself as an agitator on behalf of the Palestinian cause.

  In the 1970s, Sanchez was sent to Amman, Jordan, to train as a guerrilla fighter for the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine). It was during this period that he began to use the name ‘Carlos’. (Later, ‘The Jackal’ was added, when a copy of the Frederick Forsyth spy thriller The Day of the Jackal was found by police at one of his many hideouts.) After this spell in the Middle East, he returned to London. There, possibly under orders from the PFLP, he performed his first terrorist act, shooting and seriously wounding British businessman Edward Seiff, as part of a protest against Jewish actions in Palestine. Seiff was a prominent Jewish figure, head of the department store Marks and Spencer, and the attack was apparently made to draw attention to the situation in the Middle East. Yet it was a strangely random episode: Sanchez called on Se
iff’s house, forced his way in past the staff, brandishing a gun, and cornered Seiff, before shooting him in the head and running off, thinking that he had killed his victim. However, by sheer chance the bullet that lodged in Seiff’s head did not kill him, but only injured him severely. It later emerged that Sanchez’ attack was prompted by the assassination of Mohamed Boudia, a theatre director thought to be a Palestinian activist, by the Israeli secret service Mossad.

  Senseless violence

  Sanchez’ career as a terrorist continued with a failed bomb attack on a Jewish bank in London, and more bomb attacks on three pro-Israeli newspapers in France. In addition, Sanchez claimed responsibility for a grenade thrown at a Parisian restaurant that killed two people and injured thirty more. He was also involved in two grenade attacks on the Jewish airline, El Al, at Orly Airport near Paris.

  Up to this point, the casualties in Sanchez’ attacks had been relatively limited. However, as his career as a terrorist progressed, his subsequent attacks became more brutal and reckless. In 1975, he led a team of terrorists to seize over sixty hostages at an OPEC meeting in Vienna, storming the meeting and demanding that a political statement he had written should be read on radio throughout the Middle East. During this attack, three people were killed. The terrorists then left with their hostages, including ministers from eleven OPEC states. After negotiations with the Austrian government, the hostages were released and the terrorists were granted political asylum.

  It now became clear that Sanchez was enjoying his notoriety. Like Abu Nidal, who also began his career as a committed Palestinian activist, Sanchez appeared to have entirely lost the political rationale for his actions, and his attacks were becoming more senselessly violent. The attacks continued and seemed more and more arbitrary in nature: in 1982, for example, one person was killed and sixty-three injured when a car bomb exploded in the centre of Paris.

  Playboy terrorist

  Not surprisingly, the antics of ‘Carlos the Jackal’ engendered a great deal of antipathy towards the Palestinian cause among the general public and the media; consequently, the Palestinian groups that had protected him in the past now began to withdraw their support. Unfortunately, this did not stop Sanchez from pursuing his terrorist activities, and he continued to perpetrate bomb attacks across Europe throughout the next decade, killing dozens of people in the process and injuring hundreds.

  Despite his unpopularity with the Palestinian activists, and his obviously violent personality, Sanchez continued to find that he had friends in high places. Although he was a known terrorist, and was wanted by the authorities of many countries in Europe, he was given asylum at various times by radical Arab regimes in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. He was protected by the governments of these countries from the agencies who were legitimately pursuing him for his crimes: from the CIA, Interpol and French intelligence in particular. Even when it became clear that Sanchez was acting as a mercenary, the Arab regimes continued to protect him. Sanchez’ career as a mercenary, selling himself and his men as guns for hire, is thought to have amassed him a fortune, and he was able to live in luxury while pursuing his taste for violence. He clearly enjoyed his wealth, and acquired a reputation as a flamboyant playboy and womaniser who enjoyed living the high life.

  Life on the run

  In 1982, Sanchez became involved in an attack on a nuclear reactor in France, but the attempt failed. However, two members of the group were arrested, including Sanchez’ wife, Magdalena Kopp, who was closely connected to the Bader-Meinhof Gang in Germany. In order to intimidate the authorities into freeing the suspects, Sanchez contacted the police, threatening to launch a series of attacks unless the suspects were released. When the authorities refused to give them up, he went on to launch a series of bombings, including one attack on a French passenger train that killed five people and injured dozens more. However, in the long term, Sanchez’ plan failed, and far from releasing the jailed suspects, the authorities brought them to trial, where they were eventually convicted of their crimes. Magdalena Kopp received a sentence of six years’ imprisonment, after which she returned to live with her terrorist husband.

  By now, Sanchez’ brutal attacks were becoming legendary, and the radical Arab countries who had previously supported him were beginning to back away from giving him protection. Moreover, the Soviet bloc countries were also removing their support, realising that Sanchez had now become a thug rather than a political activist with any clear plan of action. He was eventually allowed to settle in Syria, but was only tolerated there on condition that his terrorist activities ceased. Political events in the Middle East then caused another twist in the tale, when rumours spread that Saddam Hussein wanted to hire Sanchez to make a terrorist strike on the United States. At this point, Syria exiled Sanchez from the country, and he was forced to move around the Middle East as an underground operative.

  It was not long before Sanchez found his way to the Sudan, which had a reputation for harbouring terrorist activists such as Osama bin Laden. In the Sudan, an Islamic sheikh offered him protection, but the relationship did not last long. Sanchez was a Westernized playboy who delighted in gratifying his lusts, and not surprisingly, this openly debauched behaviour caused disapproval from the fundamentalist sheikh, who arranged for him to be handed over to the French police. He was finally arrested in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1994. From there, he was taken to France, where, he was held for three years in solitary confinement. In 1997, he was tried, convicted and given a life sentence. Today, he continues to serve his sentence, all but forgotten as one of the most vicious criminal masterminds of the twentieth century.

  Oklahoma Bomber

  Timothy McVeigh, otherwise known as the Oklahoma bomber, committed one of the most deadly terror attacks in the history of the United States. In 1995, he detonated a bomb at the Federal Building of Oklahoma, killing 168 people and injuring many more. He was convicted of the crime and executed by lethal injection, becoming the first person to undergo this punishment in the state of Oklahoma. The media often portrayed him as mentally unbalanced, but his conviction rested on the belief that he knowingly committed the crime, in a rational state of mind. It was also widely conjectured that he was acting as part of a political conspiracy to undermine the US government, but no hard evidence emerged to support this idea.

  The making of a killer

  Born in Pendleton, near Buffalo, in 1968, McVeigh spent his childhood years in upstate New York. His parents were unhappily married, and his parents split up many times, beginning when Timothy was ten, until they finally separated and divorced for good. After the split, Timothy and his siblings went to live with his father, a devout Catholic, and often attended mass. As a teenager, he was shy and withdrawn, with few friends. He was also not confident with girls and did not date any at high school. However, up to this point he did not show any remarkable anti-social traits, but was on the face of it simply an insecure, inexperienced teenager with a troubled family background.

  In 1986, McVeigh graduated from high school and attended business college, working part time flipping hamburgers. He did not complete his studies, however, and instead began work as a security guard in Buffalo. As part of his job, he received a gun permit, and began to become fascinated, if not obsessed, by guns and weaponry. According to co-workers, he also began to exhibit early signs of paranoia at this time. He became convinced that the end of civilisation was nigh, and therefore began to hoard food and weapons to save himself in this eventuality. In 1988, he bought a ten-acre plot of land with a friend and began to use it as a shooting range, before enlisting in the US army.

  Gulf war veteran

  Initially, it seemed that army life would help McVeigh to gain an identity and to succeed in building a career for himself. He was a hardworking soldier with a great deal of skill as a gunner, derived from his many hours of practise on his shooting range as a civilian. He served in the Gulf War, and was decorated with a Bronze Star medal. However, despite his success in the Gulf, it was there
that his disillusionment with the government began, as he witnessed at first hand some of the worst excesses of the war. Even so, he was promoted, and decided on his return to further his career by joining the Green Berets, the Special Operations Force of the US army.

  In a pattern that was to repeat itself throughout his life, McVeigh then dropped out of his planned career, quite suddenly. He was required to take a physical fitness test, but failed he it because he got blisters on his feet during a long march and could not walk. This minor setback appeared to undermine him completely, and instead of continuing to further his career in the army, he decided to leave. In 1991, he was discharged. This move was to prove his most fatal yet.

  Drug-induced paranoia

  As a soldier, McVeigh had become interested in extremist politics and had often spoken to his colleagues about a novel, The Turner Diaries, generally considered to be racist and anti-Semitic. His experience in the Gulf War had left him disillusioned and cynical about the way the US government operated, and he now adopted a full-blown survivalist philosophy. He believed, along with many others in the United States, that the rights of the individual were paramount, especially the right to bear arms and defend oneself. He also believed that the establishment was entirely corrupt and evil, and it should be brought down in any way possible.