This month sees the release of Carlos, the epic biopic of the infamous Carlos the Jackal. For two decades he was the most wanted terrorist on the planet, living several lives under various pseudonyms, weaving his way through the complex international politics of the period. Who was Carlos? How did his various multi-layered identities fit together? Who was he before engaging body and soul in a never-ending struggle? We look at the facts...

1949 – 12 October: Ila Maria Sich Ramírez Sánchez, the boy who would group up to become known as Carlos the Jackal in born in Caracas, Venezuela, to a Marxist lawyer, José Altagracia Ramírez, and Elba Maria Sánchez. The couple would go on to have two more sons, Lenin and Vladimir.

1966 - Carlos’ mother takes her three sons to London. The family lived for nine years in the British capital where Carlos studied and learned to speak English fluently.

1970 - June: Carlos and his brother Lenin are expelled from Lumumba University along with some twenty other students. The reason, in Carlos’ case, was “anti-Soviet provocation and indiscipline”.

1970 - July: Carlos joins the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in Beirut where he is given the nom de guerre “Carlos”, the Hispanic version of the Arabic “Khalil”. He receives training under the direct authority of Wadie Haddad (co-founder of the PFLP). Carlos takes part in the conflict between Jordanians and Palestinians that becomes known as “Black September”.

1973, 24 July: After studying at the University of London, Carlos travels to Beirut in a bid to take over from Mohamed Boudia, the PFLP representative in Paris, who was assassinated by Mossad. Wadie Haddad makes Carlos number two in his European network. He returns to London for a failed assassination attempt on Joseph Edward Sieff, head of Marks & Spencer’s and vice-president of the British Zionist Federation.

1975 – In January Carlos takes part in two failed attempts to shoot down El Al airliners. On 27 In June he kills two officers of the DST (domestic intelligence agency) and seriously wounds a third, during a raid at 9 Rue Toullier in Paris. At point blank range, he executes Michel Moukharbal who, after being arrested by the DST, had led the officers to the home of one of Carlos’ girlfriends.

1975 - 21 December: Carlos leads a hostage-taking raid at the OPEC headquarters in Vienna, leaving three dead. Western secret services attribute the main responsibility for the raid to Saddam Hussein. A plane takes the terrorists and their hostages to Algiers, where a ransom is paid to save the hostages’ lives, notably those of the Saudi and Iranian oil ministers. Carlos then travels to Aden where Wadie Haddad expels him from the PFLP for having disobeyed orders by negotiating the lives of the two ministers, who were the intended targets of the operation.

1978 - The death of Wadie Haddad creates a power vacuum in the PFLP. From Eastern Europe, Carlos is now working for the highest bidder: Iraq is still a client, soon to be joined by Syria and Libya.

1979 - Carlos, Magdalena Kopp (who would soon become his wife) and Johannes Weinrich set up in East Berlin. Carlos’ German associates serve as an intermediary with the Stasi, who give the group logistical help but refuses that Berlin is used as an operational base. At the end of 1981, the Stasi estimates that Carlos’ network in Europe has some forty members, with around 200 auxiliaries in the Arab world. In August they establish a second base in Budapest.

1982, 16 February: Magadalena Kopp and Bruno Bréguet, are arrested whilst preparing a bomb attack on the offices of newspaper “Al Watan Al Arabi”. Carlos demands their release, threatening a series of attacks on France. On 29 March, 48 hours after the deadline set by Carlos has expired, a train blast leaves five dead and twenty-seven injured. Jacques Chirac, the then Mayor of Paris, was due to be on the train. In April,a few minutes before the opening of Kopp and Bréguet’s trial, a carbomb explodes outside the “Al Watan Al Arabi” offices in Paris, killing a passer-by.

1984 - With Western pressure coming to a peak, the American Under- secretary of State responsible for Eastern Europe, Mark Palmer, tells the ambassadors of five Eastern Bloc countries that the United States is sure that their countries are providing facilities to Carlos. In the following nine months, all Carlos’ bases in Eastern Europe are shut down one after the other.

1985 - Release of Magdalena Kopp, who joins Carlos at his new base in Damascus. Elba Rosa, the only daughter of Carlos, is born the nest year.

1993 – Having split from Magdalena Carlos moves to Khartoum, under the protection of Hassan El Tourabi, the éminence grise of the Sudanese regime. Tipped off by Syrian services, the CIA locate him in the Fall/Autumn and pass the information to the French secret services.

1994 - Carlos, who has just undergone testicular surgery in a Khartoum hospital, is kidnapped and put on a plane for Paris. This covert operation is the culmination of a year of negotiations between the French government and the Islamic-military junta in Khartoum.

1997 - Carlos (aged 48) stands trial in Paris and is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of two DST agents in the Rue Toullier. He remains imprisoned to this day.

Carlos is in cinemas from 22 October.