Death Before Dishonour - True Stories of The Special Forces Heroes Who Fight Global Terror

by Nicholas Davies

  As the Legionnaires pushed on towards the town centre the resistance became tougher, because the rebels opened up with mortars and machine guns. But the Legionnaires were taking no prisoners. They had seen that the rebels had shown their victims no mercy and they were determined to find and kill every rebel they came across. As the townspeople heard the sound of gunfire they threw caution to the wind, grabbed their children and ran towards the sound of the shooting in the hope of finding safety. This caused problems for the Legionnaires as they took aim at the rebel troops. And the fleeing women and children also provided the rebels with easy targets for their machine-gunners, who mowed down twenty or more before they reached the safety of the Legionnaires.

  The townspeople were able to give valuable information to the Legion, telling them that the rebel command had taken up positions in the principal hotel and the main police station and that marauding gangs of rebels were roaming the streets, mostly drunk, and killing blacks and whites at random. They also reported that some of the rebels seemed to take great delight in torturing and killing the whites, making them dance in the street while they fired shots at their feet. When, through exhaustion, the victims could dance no longer, the rebels shot them in the head, while roaring with laughter.

  The Legion knew they had to take command of the town that day and somehow hang on against overwhelming odds because the next batch of four hundred Legion paratroopers would not arrive until the next morning. The decision was taken to secure both the hotel and the police station, which could then be defended through the night. During the afternoon sections of paratroopers went into the Old Town to tackle the rebel gunmen, who could be heard firing intermittently. Firefights took place, but the rebels were no match for the accurate, disciplined Legionnaires, who had no compunction in shooting to kill every armed rebel they came across that day.

  There was only one main attack which seriously tested the Legionnaires metal, and that was when the rebels took their three armoured cars into the Old Town, firing their powerful machine guns from the turrets. Behind the armoured cars came rebels who also kept up a steady stream of fire, pinning down the Legionnaires in the alleys and shanty buildings. The Legionnaires replied with grenades, which they hurled into the melee of rebel troops sheltering behind the armoured cars. It worked, and after a few minutes the rebels turned and scattered while the Legionnaires opened fire, killing some eighty of them. Fearing they might be cut off, the armoured cars withdrew and the Legionnaires went about their task of searching out armed rebels and killing them on the spot.

  But the main thrust of the Legion’s first day in Kolwezi was to take the two main objectives – the hotel and the police station. First, they targeted the hotel. One platoon of Legionnaires was sent to the right flank, and when in position they opened fire on the rebels defending the building. As soon as the rebels rushed to fire at the flanking soldiers, two platoons of Legionnaires made courageous frontal assaults on the hotel, racing in firing sub-machine guns from the hip and causing so much alarm and mayhem in the hotel that the defenders simply fled rather than take on the charging paratroopers.

  The police station proved more problematic because it was easier to defend. Here again the Legion officers decided on a frontal assault, but only after a flanking platoon had the defenders holed up with constant sniper fire. As dusk fell the Legionnaires once again raced towards the front of the police station, firing as they went, while those on the flank opened up with machine guns, forcing the rebels inside to lie low. Within sixty seconds the Legionnaires had reached the walls of the police station and they lobbed grenades through every window. In a bid to save themselves, a dozen rebels sprinted out of the building, but they barely made three or four yards before the Legionnaires gunned them down.

  Now the Legion had two positions which could, with luck, be defended until relief arrived the next morning. But it would prove a long, hot night, for the rebel commanders repeatedly tried to recapture both buildings. At one point both the hotel and police station were surrounded by a few hundred rebels who fired non-stop for thirty minutes. But the Legionnaires handled the attacks with confidence, picking off a number of rebels, which seemed to sap the will of the others to take further action.

  As the arrival of the other parachute battalion drew near, the Legionnaires turned up the heat, taking the fight to the weary and hung-over rebels. They wanted to make sure that their comrades dropping out of the skies would not receive a hostile reception. They also gambled on the fact that the Congolese rebels would not relish tackling two battalions of Legionnaires, one at their front, the other at their back. And they were right. One minute the rebels could be seen moving out of town towards the airport, and the next they seemed to be dispersing in every direction.

  Legion jeeps and trucks also arrived that day, but as the second flight of four hundred paratroopers moved towards Kolwezi to link up with their comrades, the Congolese rebels decided the time had come to quit the town and escape back to the safety of Angola, from where they had come just a few days before. On their arrival the battalion had no intention of letting such butchers off the hook so lightly and pursued them relentlessly right to the Angolan border. They were shown no mercy. Some hundred or so rebels were slaughtered during their retreat.

  Undeniably, the rescue of more than two thousand white men, women and children in Kolwezi was a brilliant and courageous Legion success, though they were unhappy that some two hundred and fifty whites and some two hundred blacks had been slaughtered in the most appalling circumstances by the rampaging rebels. In the entire operation the Legion suffered five dead and twenty-five wounded.

  This author was with the French Foreign Legion in Lebanon in the summer of 1982, when the United Nations called on the Legion to escort the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, and his guerrilla fighters to safety. Arafat and his thousand-strong force were retreating in some disarray before the Syrian army, which was hell-bent on destroying his Palestinian fighters.

  I was with Arafat’s headquarters unit, made up of six of his lieutenants and advisers and some twelve heavily armed bodyguards, retreating towards the safety of Tripoli, when the pursuing Syrian forces caught up with the rearguard. We were holed up in a cave outside Tripoli, with the Syrians firing machine guns at our position, when a platoon of some thirty Legionnaires arrived on the scene. They took control of the immediate area, fanning out in a show of strength and warning the Syrians to stop firing and back away, otherwise they would launch an attack to remove them. While the Legionnaires held the position facing the Syrians, Arafat and his men slipped away and reached the safety of a house in Tripoli which had been secured by the Legion. Without a further shot being fired, the Syrians faded away. Some ten hours later I watched Arafat and his men set sail for the safety of Libya as the Legion held the port.

  CHAPTER 4

  COUNTERING TERROR

  THE LATE 1960S AND 1970S saw a dramatic upsurge in terrorist activity in various parts of the world, particularly Europe and the Middle East, and during this period the man who became known as ‘Carlos the Jackal’ was the epitome of the international terrorist. Mysterious, cunning, courageous, ruthless and intelligent, he was one of the most effective and sure-footed terrorists ever known. Carlos was born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez in 1949, the son of a Venezuelan millionaire lawyer who openly trumpeted Marxism and inspired his son to follow his fervent commitment to the communist cause. As a teenager, Carlos joined various Venezuelan terror groups opposed to the nation’s dictator, President Raul Leoni, and took part in a number of low-key urban guerrilla operations.

  After being educated in London and Paris, Carlos spent a year at the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where he was indoctrinated still further in the ideology of communism. He went on to join the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in Beirut, which was where he was given the nickname ‘Carlos’. Under the tuition of the Palestine terror groups he trained to become a first-rate terrorist, expert in weapons and explosives and guer
rilla tactics. The PFLP leadership, however, quickly came to realise that Carlos was no ordinary foot soldier but a highly intelligent young man who could be trained to become an outstanding strategist. From Beirut, he was sent to London, where he was tasked with selecting potential targets for assassination or kidnapping. He drew up a list of some five hundred people who then dominated the worlds of politics, business and even the arts.

  In October 1973 a brief war erupted in the Middle East, but before Israel could press home a retaliatory victory against Egypt and Syria, the Soviet Union demanded that the United States bring the conflict to an end, otherwise it might have to intervene to prevent the aggressors, who were two of its Middle East client states, being crushed. A few months earlier, following the death of one of the PFLP’s senior planners, Carlos had been activated as its chief assassin, and now, in the wake of the October war, he carried out the first of his many terror attacks. He arrived at the London home of Edward Sieff, the chairman of Marks & Spencer, and when the butler opened the door he held a revolver to his chest, ordering him to take him to his employer. They walked into the bathroom, where Carlos shot Sieff in the face, turned on his heel and ran. But somehow Sieff survived the point-blank attack. The following day the PFLP claimed responsibility for the shooting.

  Within weeks Carlos went into action again, throwing a bomb into the City of London branch of an Israeli bank. The bomb failed to go off but a witness to the attack gave a description of a suspect that matched Carlos in every detail. By now London had become too hot for the terrorist, so he moved to Paris and carried out bomb attacks on three pro-Israeli newspapers. He also bombed a crowded store in the city, killing two people and wounding more than thirty. Days later he shot dead the military attaché of the Uruguay Embassy in Paris.

  Rapidly, Carlos was earning himself a formidable reputation, particularly among the security services of Israel, the United States and all western Europe’s democratic nations. His one-man terror campaign was also proving highly embarrassing to governments whose responsibility it was to track down and arrest or kill him. But a stop had to be put to his daring, pitiless violence.

  Aided by a single accomplice, Carlos opened fire with a Soviet anti-tank rocket-launcher on an Israeli El Al Boeing 707 carrying one hundred and thirty-six passengers and crew as it taxied slowly along the runway at Orly airport in Paris in January 1975. The terrorists’ first rocket missed the target but hit a Yugoslav Airlines DC-9; their second rocket also missed. In panic the two men fled the scene and the launcher was later found on the back seat of a car stolen earlier that day. A week later Carlos returned to Orly accompanied by three Palestinians, but they were spotted and fled. He melted away in the crowd while the three Palestinians grabbed some hostages and dragged them into a lavatory. Eventually the hostages were released unharmed and in return the three gunmen were given safe passage to Baghdad.

  Then, in December of that year, Carlos led a group of six terrorists, including one woman, into the headquarters in Vienna of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, where the OPEC oil ministers were meeting. This well-planned attack would make Carlos the world’s number-one terrorist as television pictures of the incident were flashed around the world.

  The group walked into the first-floor offices firing automatic machine pistols, shot dead three people, including one police officer, and stormed into the room where the oil ministers were meeting. Shouting and yelling at everyone to stay still and not move, they rounded up all eleven ministers and fifty members of staff.

  As armed police rushed towards the building the terrorists took up positions at the windows, firing at the officers below. One terrorist and a police officer were wounded. The group freed a woman hostage and, along with her and the injured terrorist, they sent a ransom note. In this they demanded that a political communiqué written by Carlos should be broadcast on Austrian state radio and that an aircraft should be made available to fly the terrorists and the OPEC ministers and the other hostages to the Middle East.

  The Austrian authorities had little option but to agree to the demands and the terrorists and all their hostages were driven to Vienna airport in a bus with blacked-out windows. Television pictures showed the gun-toting terrorists on the tarmac ushering their hostages on to the Austrian Airlines DC-9. Only when airborne did Carlos tell the pilot that he must fly to Algiers. Shortly after the plane landed, all but fifteen hostages were released and the terrorists took another aircraft to neighbouring Libya.

  In Libya, the terrorists made further demands. They wanted a huge ransom from Saudi Arabia and Iran in return for the lives of their respective oil ministers. After phone calls between King Khaled of Saudi Arabia and the Shah of Iran a deal was agreed and a ransom of some forty million dollars was transferred from Switzerland into the account, in a bank in Aden, of the PFLP’s Special Operations Group. The following day the aircraft, with some of the hostages still on board, returned to Algiers. After confirmation that the ransom had been deposited, all the hostages were released and Carlos and his accomplices were driven away, bringing to an end one of the most public, audacious and successful terrorist actions of modern times. Carlos was now the world’s most wanted terrorist.

  In June 1976 Carlos, working with Wadi Haddad, the PFLP’s head of terrorism, masterminded the hijacking of an Air France Airbus from Tel Aviv to Paris via Athens. This hijacking would result in one of the most dramatic and courageous rescue missions in the history of modern terrorism, an operation which drew praise from Special Forces soldiers throughout the world. The story of the raid at Entebbe is told in the following chapter.

  Carlos did not take an active part in the Air France hijack, nor the action at Entebbe. But, funded by millions of dollars from the OPEC ransom, he went on to set up his own terrorist action group, recruit his own elite force of hijackers and gunmen from around the world and, as a safeguard, work in co-operation with the Mukhabarat, the highly secretive Iraqi intelligence agency. Between 1979 and 1981 he and his terrorist group were recruited by Colonel Gadaffi of Libya to track down his opponents who had fled in fear from Libya, and assassinate them. In return Gadaffi would pay handsomely for the various operations and supply Carlos with all the arms, ammunition and terrorist supplies he required. When necessary, aircraft, ships and boats were provided, as well as access to safe houses in a number of European countries. Western intelligence agencies confirm that during these two years a number of political opponents of Gadaffi who had fled Libya were assassinated in mysterious circumstances. However, Carlos came to consider the Libyans unprofessional and inefficient, and decided to offer his services to other terrorist states.

  In the early years of terrorist activity by Carlos, the PFLP and Abu Nidal in the Middle East and Europe, the IRA in Northern Ireland, the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany, Direct Action in France, the Red Brigades in Italy and ETA in Spain, most countries relied on police forces and one or two Special Forces to track down and take out those who were prepared to hijack and demand ransoms. But that attitude changed dramatically as terrorist groups recruited more violent volunteers to their cause. Not only were the numbers of Special Forces members greatly increased but, in some cases, regular soldiers also had to be deployed in a bid to either bring terrorists to justice or kill them.

  Back in the late 1960s the Secret Intelligence Services of most western European nations and the United States had been warning their governments of the increase in covert terrorist cells seeking to subvert or even replace democratically elected governments by the use of violence, murder, kidnapping and bombing. Many of this new breed of terrorists were bright, intelligent, middle-class and well-educated young people who felt they had a mission in life. Some believed that they were correcting legitimate wrongs, and demanded that minorities be given the same privileges as the majority. Others, with some justification, were supporting civil rights in various European countries, inspired by the success of such campaigns by blacks and Hispanics in the United States.

  What
disturbed western European intelligence services was that some of the people they were keeping under surveillance were prepared to go to any lengths, including the slaughter of innocent civilians, to push forward their demands, which were usually hard-left or communist-inspired. But because intelligence staff were rarely able to infiltrate these secret terrorist cells, they could only react to terrorism after the event; they were powerless to prevent atrocities taking place. Neither the standing armies of Europe nor the civilian police were trained or equipped to carry out successful anti-terrorist activities, which meant that governments needed to recruit, train and deploy squads of tough, ruthless paramilitary soldiers in a bid to halt the terrorists’ war on democratic governments.

  Governments became convinced that the only way to combat terrorism was to meet force with force. They also agreed to co-operate much more closely on sharing intelligence about terrorist groups despite the fact that many of these organisations were concerned with their own national issues rather than the broader aspect of undermining European democracy as a whole. That would come later, when terrorist groups began swapping intelligence and tactics in an effort to defeat the forces of law and order across national borders.

  In establishing or revamping their Special Forces, most European countries took as their template the British SAS, which had already shown its worth in counter-terrorism operations in various parts of the world outside Europe since World War Two. It was fortunate that they did so, for terrorism was set to create serious problems for many European democracies during the coming decades. Indeed the continuing difficulties facing governments and their Special Forces were underlined by the events of September 11 2001 and the subsequent global war on terrorism urged on its allies by the United States.