Half a century after the operation, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known as "Carlos the Jackal," asserts that the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi ordered the 1975 OPEC attack, not his late counterpart Saddam Hussein, as had been widely believed for decades.
In an investigation published by the Washington Post, writer Joby Warrick recounts the details of his meeting with "Carlos the Jackal" inside the French prison of Poissy in March 2025.
The man, who was in his mid-seventies and showed the effects of decades of isolation behind bars, presented an account that overturned a fifty-year-old hypothesis that "the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi ordered the attack on the OPEC headquarters in Vienna on December 21, 1975, and not the regime of the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as previous accounts suggested."
That morning, six armed men boarded a Vienna tram, disguised among shoppers and concealing their weapons under winter coats. They stormed the building, killing three people and taking 62 hostages, including oil ministers and high-ranking officials. Carlos, then only 26, identified himself to the hostages, saying, "I am the famous Carlos," and told them not to be afraid. The group adopted the name "Arm of the Arab Revolution" and chanted pro-Palestinian slogans, demanding a political statement be broadcast and a plane be provided to transport the hostages.
But the real target, according to Carlos's testimony, was the assassination of Saudi Oil Minister Ahmad Zaki Yamani (from 1962 to 1986) and Iranian envoy Jamshid Amouzegar. Carlos personally informed Yamani that he had received orders to kill him, apologizing to him in a manner that combined threat and admiration.
The investigation reveals that the motive was a conflict within OPEC over oil prices following the 1973 embargo. Gaddafi wanted to escalate pressure on the West, while Saudi Arabia and Iran leaned towards moderation.
To avoid direct Libyan involvement, Gaddafi used Carlos as an early example of "mercenary terrorism." However, the Libyan leader abandoned the group during the hostage crisis, with Carlos later describing him as a "madman" who nearly caused their deaths.
Carlos was arrested in Sudan in 1994 and sentenced to three life terms. Today, with a fading memory and a diminished showmanship, he remains a witness to an operation that inaugurated the relationship between terrorism, media, and politics, and opened the door to a question that has remained unanswered for half a century: Who was really pulling the strings?
Mark
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