Hugo Chavez attempted to have France free the terrorist Carlos the Jackal

“Now I’m a member of the Government,” the Jackal declared after the triumph of the current Venezuelan president.

The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, and several powerful figures in his government have multiplied their efforts to achieve the release of Ilich Ramiírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, from prison. Documents and evidence in the possession of this newspaper provide evidence of the activities of high Venezuelan officials on behalf of the man who was considered “Public Enemy No. 1,” the most hunted terrorist on the planet, before bin Laden. Carlos is currently serving a life sentence in the Parisian jail, La Santé.

The relationship of Chávez with terrorists and the governments that protect them – according to the definition of the United States after the attacks of 9/11 – casts suspicion on a government that considers its principal friends to be the Iraqi Sadam Hussein, the Libyan Muammar Gaddafi, or the Cuban Fidel Castro, and who extends the hand of friendship to the Colombian guerrillas lead by Manual Marulanda, Tirofijo.

It all began in 1999, with a personal letter from Chávez, dated March 3, in which the man who was already president of Venezuela (he had taken office a month before) greeted the Jackal as “Distinguished Compatriot.” After this came instructions to the Exterior Minister, José Vicente Rangel, urging the Embassy in Paris to press for the end of the terrorist’s solitary confinement. But the most important initiative was the demand for “immediate” explanations from France regarding the imprisonment of Carlos and his “physical condition,” relayed by a letter from Rangel to his French colleague, Hubert Védrine. These initiatives coincided with the strategy of Carlos’ attorneys, who insist that the proceedings in France must be overturned because Carlos’ capture, which occurred in the Sudan in 1994, took place under illegal conditions. (The letter of the Venezuelan minister is reproduced in this article.)

Hubert Védrine replied to Rangel’s request with another letter, in which he insisted again upon the “normalcy of the proceedings” connected with Ilich Ramírez Sánchez. The French minister maintained that Carlos had been turned over by the Sudanese government, in a “sovereign act of that State.” And he noted that, in addition to the sentence for three killings, Ilich Ramírez had other cases pending before the courts because of a series of killings committed in France, in which 15 persons died and 209 were injured. Finally, Védrine attested to the prisoner’s good state of health and called embassy personnel who had visited him as witnesses to this.

EL PAÍS has a copy of the response of the French Foreign Office Minister, dated June 26, 1999. For Bernard Valerón, spokesman for the Quai d’Orsay, the document is actually part of the official correspondence of his office with the Venezuelan government.

The request for explanations occurred after a spectacular initiative by Chávez himself, who began his Presidential term by sending a personal letter to Illich Ramírez. The text of Chávez’ letter, rhetorical and fulsome, addressed Carlos as “Distinguished Compatriot.” And what was the meaning of the closing of the letter: “With profound faith in the cause and the mission, now and forever!”?

When the existence of this letter was discovered, Chávez denied its political importance and reduced it to the category of humanitarian gesture. But not all Venezuelan prisoners can rely upon the protection of the President of the Nation. At that time, the head of the Venezuelan consular service in France was Nelson Castellanos, an officer with 16 years of service, who denies any resemblance between the attention given to Carlos and that given to other imprisoned Venezuelans: “I ask you, what other prisoner received even a word of support from the President,” says Castellanos, who was the Venezuelan consul to Paris from 1995 to 1999.

Nelson Castellanos and Ilich Ramírez met in 1991, in Lebanon, where the former had arrived to be the business manager of the Venezuelan Embassy only to be “kidnapped by Carlos and eight armed men,” who set him free a few days later after making demands that Castellanos refuses to specify. Their next meeting in Paris took place under other conditions: Castellanos was the consul and thus was responsible for visiting prisoners; Ramírez Sánchez was already in prison and was attempting to get out of La Santé by any means possible.

“Before Chávez got into power, I visited Carlos several times in prison; it was the normal attention provided by the Consulate to prisoners,” Castellanos says. “But everything changed when Chávez won the elections. The next time I visited, the first words of the Jackal were, “Now I’m a member of the Government.” He said that the Embassy in Paris would have to be at his service.”

Two weeks after the letter of Chávez, the terrorist received a visit in La Santé from [Venezuelan Parliament member] Pedro Mosquera, who “stated that he wanted to be ready to provide his assistance” and “repeated to Ramírez Sánchez that he intended to do what he could to obtain his release,” according to a note dated April 9, 1999, sent by the then Ambassador of Venezuela to Paris, Francis Kerdel, to his Government.

The terrorist’s attorney, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre - whom he now plans to marry – accused the diplomatic office of not having paid any attention to her client for four years. The Ambassador was replaced, and Carlos was very surprised that his replacement, Hiram Giviria, did not come to see him immediately upon arriving in the French capital.

“The presentation of the credentials of the new Ambassador took longer than usual,” explains Castellanos. “The Ambassador asked French political officials if he could see the Jackal before seeing the President of the [French] Republic, but they advised him not to do this. Carlos blamed me, because I told the Ambassador that to me it seemed more appropriate to see the Jackal after Chirac.”

The pressure upon the Embassy to be more aggressive increased. ‘Once during a court hearing that had been declared by the Tribunal to be a closed hearing,” Castellanos relates, “his attorney wanted me to burst through the door, followed by television cameras, and enter the chamber by force, yelling that they were trampling on the rights of the Venezuelan consul to be present in court with his countryman.”

Through the Embassy, the prisoner in La Santé asked for the sum of 500,000 dollars (more than 90 million pesetas) to pay his attorneys. And he specified the method to be followed: the money was to be withdrawn from the “secret accounts of the Palacio de Miraflores (the residence of President Chávez), the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of the Interior, or the Foreign Ministry,” according to a note dated August 12, 1999, from the Venezuelan Embassy in Paris to the Venezuelan government.

The ex consul, Nelson Castellanos, does not know if any part of the secret funds reached the attorneys of Carlos: “There is no proof of this. What is true, is that Carlos kept asking insistently for the money, and then, suddenly, he stopped. I suppose he must have gotten what he wanted.” The Government of Caracas has denied using secret funds for the legal defense of the Jackal.

In mid-August, 1999, Carlos revealed to another Venezuelan official his plans for pressuring France. He feared that they were going to transfer him to a prison 1,000 kilometers from Paris, but he told his interviewer that “he had sent instructions that, if this should happen, all French prisoners in Venezuela would be separated out and sent to El Dorado (the most feared of Venezuelan prisons), something to which the French government would probably not respond initially, but he would mobilize the NGO’s so that they would proclaim their objection to the Venezuelan government’s measure, forcing the French government, as a lover of liberty and human rights, to complain to Venezuela; Caracas would take advantage of that moment to ask for reciprocal action in the case of Carlos.” Evidence of this appears in the letter sent to Caracas by the Embassy in Paris.

The same official stated that “citizen Ramírez Sánchez wanted to know the reason that there had been such a delay in the visit of the Ambassador, whom he referred to in an insulting manner, and that probably this delay was the fault of Nelson Castellanos (the Consul). He also referred to him in disrespectful terms, as well as to other sapos [literally, toads] (informers) in the Foreign Ministry, but “because this is a small world and everybody knows everything,” he had already given orders to get them out, Carlos told the Embassy in Paris. The Ambassador to whom he referred remained in his posting; but not the Consul, Nelson Castellanos, who was removed on September 10, 1999 and still lives in Paris, in his own house. Castellanos did not return to Venezuela, heeding the advice of friends of his in the Foreign Ministry.

He had never told this story until the climate created by September 11 made it seem a favorable time for it to be credible, and especially after he found out that Carlos had affirmed his support for bin Laden. “I refused to accept the orders of Carlos’ attorneys and asked my superiors for instructions. It is not normal for Carlos to have the privilege of sending his correspondence in the diplomatic pouch. Carlos was so angered that he requested that I be removed from the Foreign Ministry. His brother Vladimir attacked me in the Venezuelan press, and 11 days later, Jose Vicente Rangel, who was at that time the Chancellor and today is the Defense Minister, gave them what they wanted.”

Carlos’ father, Jose Altagracia Ramírez, is the founder of the Communist Party along with the Interior Minister, Luis Miquelena. Aside from this connection, the reasons for Chávez’ links with the famous terrorist are pure speculation. Before his last trip through 14 countries, including France, he attempted to negotiate an agreement for the exchange of prisoners, but it didn’t take place. During his visit to Paris last October, the President of Venezuela referred to the Jackal as “a gentleman” and insisted that his human rights must be respected.

The former Consul in Paris rejects the idea that Chávez is repaying his debt to Carlos’ family for their financing of his election campaign: “They have money, but not the capacity to finance a presidential election campaign,” Castellanos says. He suggests another theory: Chávez or Rangel “are attempting to coordinate an operation with Cuba, Colombian guerillas, the Sin Tierra movement in Brazil, or other Ecuadorian or Bolivian movements, in order to build the anti-imperialist platform that President Chávez has referred to so many times. The Venezuelan press speculates that Montesinos, the advisor of former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, who was discovered by the CIA in Venezuela, was one of the advisors on the plan. And when the Jackal said that he wants to return to Venezuela to participate in politics again, some think that this is for the purpose of directing these operations once he succeeds in getting back to Venezuela.”

***** [And now for a real laugh: the letter of Chávez to Carlos the Jackal. Talk about purple prose…]

“Distinguished Compatriot: Plunging into the depths of your letter of support, I could hear the heartbeat of its thoughts and feelings. And this is because for all things, there is a time, a time to pile up stones, and a time to throw them….to inflame the revolution or to ignore it; to advance dialectically, uniting what must be united among the warring classes or encouraging the confrontation between them, as was the theory of Iván Ilich Ulianov. [Lenin, to the rest of us] A time when we can fight for ideals, and a time when we can do nothing but value the fight itself…A time of opportunity, for the acute sense and the instinct that seeks the right psychological moment for Ariadne, clothed in laws, to spin the thread that makes it possible to escape the labyrinth.

The Liberator, Simon Bolivar, whose theories and praxis shape the doctrine that is the basis for our revolution, in a Sphinx-like prayer to God let fall this phrase that was a prelude to his physical leave-taking: “How shall I escape this labyrinth….!” The phrase, full of unspoken meaning, captured for us by his bedside physician, the Frenchman Alejandro Próspero Reverend, in his Memorias, is a deep flame that illuminates the path that we are following.

Another Frenchman, Alexander Dumas, ends his work, The Count of Monte Cristo, with this phrase of Jesus: “The life of men can be summed up in two words: wait and hope,” leading us to think that at the end of the battle, some Supreme Somebody [yes, those are his actual words] will appear, who, clothed in wisdom like Abbot Faría will show the path of escape, wrapped in new revolutionary syntheses like that God that every person carries within his heart.

Let us say with Bolivar that time will work miracles only if we maintain our righteousness of spirit and are subject to those necessary relationships that proceed from the nature of things. There is one, sole humanity, and there is no order of space-time that can put a stop to the thoughts of the hero of Caracas. Let us say with him:

I feel the energy of my soul rising, spreading out, and becoming equal to the magnitude of the perils. My doctor has told me that my soul must feed on danger so that I may keep my reason, in such a way that when God created me, he permitted this tumultuous revolution, so that I could live out my special destiny.

With profound faith in the cause and the mission, now and forever! Hugo Chávez Frías

Hugo Chavez has been running around giving big hugs to Fidel over the last several days of their meeting. The above article, published last week in the Madrid daily El País, shows Hugo's unconditional support for any and all Communist terrorists. Sorry, I didn't get around to translating it until today. All remarks in brackets are mine.

It also reveals what a nut the man is. His letter to Carlos the Jackal has got to be one of the craziest pieces of megalomania to hit paper for a long time. However, this doesn't make him any the less dangerous, to us and to his own countrymen (unless they are his constituency of Communists or terrorists, of course).

One of the best arguments for capital punishment. Mehmet Ali Agca [sp?], who shot the Pope, had been in prison in Turkey for a life sentence, was freed in an amnesty, and went on to infamy. Same story for Mohammed Atta, sprung from a life term for blowing up a school bus.

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