Terrorist Carlos `The Jackal' Arrested

CARLOS, ``The Jackal'' - the world's most-wanted terrorist for the past 20 years - has been arrested in Sudan and turned over to French agents, authorities announced Monday.

Carlos, born Illich Ramirez Sanchez, ``will be brought before French judicial authorities today,'' a ministry communique said. The ministry said he was in the custody of the DST, France's counterintelligence agency, but it did not say who arrested him.

Sudan's interior minister, Al-Tayeb Ibrahim Mohamed Khier, said Carlos was arrested in the capital of Khartoum carrying a false diplomatic passport.

The Venezuelan-born Carlos is linked to some of the most dramatic terrorist attacks of the 1970s, including the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed, and the 1975 hostage-taking at the Vienna offices of the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries.

He is also suspected of involvement in numerous terrorist attacks in the West (notably in France and Germany), generally linked to Mideast conflicts.

The press dubbed him ``The Jackal'' after the assassin sent to kill French President Charles de Gaulle in Frederick Forsyth's novel, ``The Day of the Jackal.''

In France in 1992, Carlos was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for killing two French counterintelligence agents. The agents, who were investigating attacks on Israel's El Al airplanes at Paris's Orly Airport, were killed in 1975 when they surprised Carlos at a Paris apartment.

In Berlin, where Carlos is sought in a 1983 bombing, chief prosecutor Dieter Neumann said that while he hadn't received official notification of the arrest, he was ``very happy.''

``Carlos has been known for many years as the world's most dangerous terrorist,'' Mr. Neumann said. ``I certainly hope that his arrest will be understood by others that eventually, everyone gets their due.''