INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST CALLED MIAMI HOME IN 1961***CARACAS - The Venezuelan-born international terrorist known as Carlos The Jackal has revealed for the first time that he lived in Miami in 1961, two blocks from the Orange Bowl, and was once picked up by the FBI.
In a letter written from his French prison, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, best-known for taking hostage a dozen OPEC oil ministers in Vienna in 1975, reflected on the recent death of his father, a communist who named his children after Soviet leaders. It was written in August and published this week by the government-run Caracas daily Vea.
Most of Ramírez's 20-year streak of terrorism, which made him as notorious as the Palestinian Abu Nidal, was carried out on behalf of Arab groups. He was captured in Sudan in 1994 and is now serving a life sentence for the murder of two French policemen in the mid-1970s.
''My first two conspiratorial experiences were with my father, in Bogotá in 1960 and in Miami in 1961,'' he wrote. He lived with his father in ``an apartment with a backyard in the Latinoquarter of Miami, just two blocks from the Orange Bowl stadium.''***
Eye on Mr. Chavez*** Mr. Chavez will allow a referendum and respect its results only if he is convinced that fraud or violence won't work for him. That's where the Bush administration should come in, along with Venezuelan neighbors such as Brazil. In the coming weeks, as the referendum process proceeds, they must insist to Mr. Chavez that he not disrupt it -- and be prepared to respond if he tries. If the president can persuade Venezuelans to keep him in power through a democratic vote, his country and the outside world will owe him a fresh chance. But he must not be allowed to complete his depredations on Venezuela by destroying the last vestiges of its democracy.***