Posted on 07/07/2002 4:01:39 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Ramirez also insisted he would protect Castellano from future incidents. But there were two conditions.
He must drop the investigation of the Beirut embassy scandal -- in which Venezuelan visas had been used to smuggle Palestinian militants into Europe -- and he must say nothing to Caracas about his Syrian trip.
Venezuelan diplomat Nelson Castellano was surprised by the knock on his door late one night at his apartment in Beirut, Lebanon. He was even more surprised when he answered.
There stood Ilich Ramirez, Venezuela's most infamous son, better known as the world's most feared terrorist, Carlos the Jackal.
After apologizing for the late hour, Ramirez, surrounded by gun-toting bodyguards, announced that he needed a passport for his daughter.
Castellano's response would make any bureaucrat proud. "I said, "I don't do passports at 11:30 p.m. Come to the office tomorrow.' "
The next day a passport was quickly arranged at the Venezuelan Embassy, where Castellano had been sent on a temporary posting.
Castellano somewhat sheepishly mentioned to Ramirez that the embassy staff was terrified because of his reputation, and because there had been a recent scandal about visas in which the Jackal was implicated.
You have nothing to fear, Carlos the Jackal told him.
"I want you to know I am not a visa trafficker," he said. "I'm an international terrorist."
A few days later, Nelson Castellano was kidnapped.
* * *
That was more than 10 years ago. Castellano's abduction by Ramirez and his henchmen was unsettling but brief: two days in August 1991. Castellano soon left Lebanon, when his assignment ended.
But if the diplomat thought he had seen the last of the terrorist, he would be disappointed.
Their paths crossed again in Paris. Nabbed by French agents for several deadly attacks, the Jackal was imprisoned there in 1994; Castellano, as it happened, was assigned to the Paris embassy a year later. As Venezuelan consul, it became his job to visit his old nemesis in jail.
That was the beginning of the end of Castellano's career in the foreign service. This year, in a French court, he sued Carlos the Jackal and the Venezuelan government over the loss of his job.
Castellano,49, said he had to cater to Ramirez's whims -- to see to it that the notorious prisoner was well treated, and to carry correspondence from Ramirez to the Venezuelan government.
Said Castellano, "They wanted me to be Carlos' mailman." When he balked, he said, he was fired.
Why? Castellano and other observers said that the convicted terrorist and his family hold substantial influence in Caracas, especially in leftist circles close to President Hugo Chavez.
Ramirez, 52, denied much of what Castellano said. In handwritten letters to the St. Petersburg Times, signed "Carlos," he called Castellano an "enemy agent" in the service of "foreign interests."
As for the kidnapping in Beirut, Ramirez said Castellano has it all wrong. "We saved Castellano from assassination by Lebanese gangsters," Ramirez wrote; what the diplomat perceived as an abduction was really "an armed escort."
* * *
Castellano remembers it differently.
Two weeks after issuing the passport for Ramirez's daughter, he said, he was picked up by armed guards, bundled into a car, and driven east at breakneck speed through the Bekaa Valley and over the border into Syria.
There, on the outskirts of Damascus, Castellano said, the Jackal was waiting to greet him in a house full of armed men.
"It was like a barracks, more than a house," he recalled in a recent interview in Miami.
He would remain a virtual prisoner for the next two days.
Though held against his will, Castellano conceded, he was well treated. Ramirez even cooked him a traditional Venezuelan chicken and vegetable soup, known as sancocho.
The two men spoke for hours. Castellano recalled Ramirez outlining his goals of attacking the United States and the destruction of Israel.
Ramirez described how he financed his terrorist operations. "When I have need, I pick a rich man and I write to him," he said. "I remind him he has a family and he sends me money."
Ramirez also insisted he would protect Castellano from future incidents. But there were two conditions.
He must drop the investigation of the Beirut embassy scandal -- in which Venezuelan visas had been used to smuggle Palestinian militants into Europe -- and he must say nothing to Caracas about his Syrian trip.
"I am going to create a circle around you, for your protection," Ramirez told him.
But it was also a circle designed to protect Ramirez -- from prosecution.
Castellano says the chief witness in the visa fraud was murdered. The investigation died with him.
* * *
French police had been after Ilich Ramirez for almost 20 years when agents finally nailed him in Sudan in August 1994.
Accused of killing 18 people, including two French policemen, and wounding 209 others in six terrorist attacks, Ramirez was abducted and flown to Paris.
The Jackal's capture became front-page news, although terrorism experts indicated that the world of international intrigue had long since passed him by. His most famous crime -- the 1975 kidnapping of 11 OPEC oil ministers in Vienna -- was nearly 20 years in the past.
He was shut away in solitary confinement at the capital's maximum-security jail, La Sante, where he remains today.
* * *
Castellano was thrilled to be appointed consul to Paris in 1995. A lover of fine art, he knew the city well and looked forward to assisting a program of cultural exchanges.
He was less happy about the prospect of dealing with Ramirez again.
Venezuelan officials personally assured Castellano that he had no reason to worry. He should handle the case of the Jackal the way he would any Venezuelan jailed abroad.
Their first meeting was friendly, recalled Castellano. "He gave me a big hug and two kisses."
Even so, Castellano felt uneasy. The room was small and windowless.
Ramirez was his usual dapper self, dressed in a blazer, neckerchief and deck shoes. "He looked like he just got off a yacht," said Castellano.
But Castellano said he wasn't going to be fooled again. "He has various personalities. He plays at being refined. He can be a gentleman one minute but, if you don't do what he says, his tone quickly turns threatening."
They talked for four hours. Ramirez complained that the embassy wasn't doing enough for him. He claimed that the case against him was political and that Venezuela should protest his "illegal" arrest in Sudan.
Ramirez ended the meeting saying that someone of his international stature deserved a visit from the consul every week. He was upset when four months passed before he saw Castellano again.
Castellano gave the matter little thought. In December 1997 Ramirez was sentenced to life for the murder of the two French policemen.
* * *
Everything changed when Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela in December 1998. On Castellano's next visit to La Sante prison, he said, Ramirez had a message for him.
"He said, "Now I'm the government,' " recalled Castellano. In subsequent visits Ramirez became angry, insisting that embassy staff, including the ambassador and the consul, would pay dearly for failing to attend to his case.
Castellano interpreted some remarks as direct threats and informed the ambassador. Diplomatic cables were sent to Caracas asking for instruction. None was received.
Meanwhile, public statements by the new government appeared to confirm Ramirez's bravado.
Defense Minister Jose Vicente Rangel told the press that Ramirez was not considered a terrorist in Venezuela as he had committed no crime there and that the embassy would pay greater attention to the prisoner's plight. He challenged the French on the legality of Ramirez's detention in Sudan.
The change had to do with both the new president and those around him. According to analysts, the election of Chavez brought to power a clique of aging leftists, including a number of friends of Ramirez's father, Jose Altagracia Ramirez, the founder of the Venezuelan Communist Party.
Among them were Defense Minister Rangel and National Assembly President Luis Miquilena. Miquilena had at one stage shared a jail cell with Ramirez senior. Rangel had grown up in the same province, Tachira, as the Ramirez family.
"They are old family friends," said Pastor Heydra, a member of Congress and former Communist Party leader. Rangel, he pointed out, had twice been a presidential candidate for the Venezuelan Communist Party.
Moreover, in left-wing circles a myth had built up around Carlos, said Castellano. "People saw him as a Robin Hood figure. Books were written about him. They saw him as a Venezuelan who did something original. They forgot about all the deaths he caused."
According to Castellano, sympathy for the terrorist soon translated into pressure on the Venezuelan Embassy in Paris.
Staff found themselves increasingly at Ramirez's beck and call. They were asked to carry correspondence ranging from his requests for legal aid to a weekly column he wrote for a Caracas newspaper.
Called "The Bastille," after the famous Paris prison stormed during the French Revolution, the column railed against American imperialism and the bourgeoisie.
When Chavez won a referendum to rewrite the constitution and hold new congressional elections, Ramirez asked for voter registration documents. He also sought to register as a candidate.
In April 1999, Chavez sent a personal letter to Carlos addressing him as a "distinguished countryman" and expressing his solidarity with "the cause and the mission."
Chavez later explained the letter, saying it "didn't imply political solidarity."
"It's simply human solidarity. Every human deserves respect, whatever he is going through," he said.
Sensing his new power, in August 1999 Ramirez demanded that the government fire Castellano. He argued the consul had failed in his duty to represent the new government's revolutionary posture.
It was a request repeated by Ramirez's brother, Vladimir, to the Caracas press. Within days Castellano's 16-year career came to an abrupt end.
In its hurry to dismiss him, Castellano said, the Foreign Ministry violated its own severance regulations. The consul was fired on the spot without due notice, and no arrangements were made for his return home. In fact, Castellano was privately advised by officials to stay away for a while.
A spokesman for the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry said Castellano was a political appointee and therefore not entitled to the benefits of career diplomats.
Unsure what to do, he turned to French authorities and requested political asylum. He maintained a diplomatic silence until he was granted permanent residency in August.
* * *
It was only after Sept. 11, said Castellano, that he felt obliged to speak out.
"Either I told the truth or I became an accomplice of those who are manipulating the country in the interests of a terrorist," he said.
He pulled out a sheaf of newspaper clippings of interviews going back to 1998, in which Ramirez stated his admiration for Osama bin Laden.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Ramirez described the death toll as "almost all enemy soldiers in uniform," adding that bin Laden's struggle "is mine."
The Venezuelan government's ambiguous stance on terrorism also began to create internal tensions after Sept. 11, according to analysts.
"The biggest problem Chavez faces is the split between the government and the military over the issue of terrorism," said Jack Sweeney, a Virginia-based intelligence expert.
Besides the kid-gloves treatment of Ramirez, there were other disturbing signals. Among them: allegations of cross-border collaboration with guerrillas in Colombia, a highly-publicized visit to Iraq by Chavez and the presence in Venezuela of members of ETA, the Spanish separatist group.
But foreign governments, including the United States, dismissed Chavez's odd behavior as populist antics. U.S. officials declined to comment on the Venezuelan government's ties to Ramirez for this article. Spanish and French officials also played down the relationship.
U.S. officials were convinced that Chavez's political control was slipping. They saw no point in challenging him directly, and risking accusations of Yanqui imperialism.
That appears to remain the policy today. After a failed April 11 coup, Chavez's hold on power remains shaky at best.
Though Carlos continues to complain of government abandonment and lack of legal funds, he remains loyal to Chavez. In a letter to the Times he described him as "the only president of Venezuela in a century to present a truly revolutionary and nationalist political platform for our people."
But analysts predict Chavez may have to sacrifice some of his former allegiances to avoid further discord in the military.
As for Castellano, living in exile, he hopes his lawsuit will provoke a response from the government that cut him loose. Venezuelans, he said, should know why the Jackal was worth more than his career.
-- Times Caracas correspondent Phil Gunson contributed to this report. David Adams can be reached at dadams7308@aol.com.
Colombia 'Worried' FARC Crossing Into Venezuela***Stories and LINKS to FARC and Hugo Chavez.
Yes, it is... and some would argue that it's already gone through the front door.
I have long told people that if they want to see a precursor to "things that may come to America," look towards Israel.
Setting that boiling pot aside for a moment, there is the cauldron in Latin America and the Carribean Basin to keep in mind.
Then there's the "Jihad! Across the World" with tentacles all over the place- Malaysia, the Philippines, elsewhere.
If you want to get really paranoid, there's always Red China and North Korea to consider for future mischief... and heck! Even the IRA is stirring the pot!
On an intellectual level, it's a darkly fascinating time to be present and alive... of course, on a practical level it's fraught with peril.
Bumps!!
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