Friday, June 02, 2006

Chavez: Carlos 'The Jackal' a "good friend"

Chavez: Bad Company

Just when I thought Venezuela president and apparent supporter of terrorism couldn't get any whackier, he raises the bar. During the OPEC meeting held in Caracas, he described Carlos "The Jackal", infamous assassin and terrorist, as "a good friend".

A little about "The Jackal" from the article:
Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, gained notoriety during the Cold War for staging a string of bombings and assassinations. He is serving a life sentence for murder in France.
Apparently, they've been pen-pals:

Chavez recalled in his speech how Ramirez once in a letter referred to the Venezuelan leader's 1999 tour of OPEC member states.

He said Carlos, "a good friend," said in the missive from his prison that the tour appeared "hair-raising."

Small wonder that friendship with Chavez was recently described as "toxic".

2 comments:

Camilo Pino said...

Ironically, Carlos the Jackal gained world notoriety after kidnapping 70 hostages precisely during an Opec ministerial meeting in 1975.

In March 1999, a recently inaugurated president Chavez responded to a letter by Ramirez with a delirious, apologetic text. Some fragments of Chavez’s letter taken from a Harper Magazine translation follow:

“Citizen Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, Distinguished Compatriot,

Swimming in the depths of your letter of solidarity I could hear the pulse of our shared insight that everything has its due time.”

“Our liberator Simon Bolivar, whose theories and example are fundamental to our doctrine of revolution, whispered briefly this question before he passed away: “How will I find the way out of this labyrinth”?"

“With profound faith in our cause and our mission, now and forever!”

They say a man is known by the company he keeps.

Eric said...

And now Chavez is announcing plans to add 6,000 troops to the 1,000 already on the Colombian border.

This guy's gonna cause big problems in South America.