Former OPEC Headquarters (Universitatsring 10)
On 21 December 1975, Carlos the Jackal and his six person commando stormed the OPEC headquarters at this Ringstrasse address, murdering three people and seizing 62 hostages, including eleven of the world's most powerful oil ministers.
Su questo luogo
Today it is an unremarkable office building beside the busy Schottentor junction, but in 1975 Universitätsring 10, then called Karl Lueger Ring 10, housed the world headquarters of OPEC, the cartel controlling most of the planet's oil. On the Sunday before Christmas, while eleven oil ministers sat in conference upstairs, six terrorists led by the Venezuelan Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, walked in carrying sports bags full of machine pistols and grenades. Within minutes three people were dead: Austrian police officer Anton Tichler, shot in the back of the neck weeks before his retirement, an Iraqi security officer, and Libyan delegate Yousef Ismirli, who died trying to wrestle a gun from the attackers. Chancellor Bruno Kreisky's government negotiated through the night, and the next morning the commando flew out of Vienna with dozens of hostages aboard a DC 9, hopscotching between Algiers and Tripoli before releasing everyone for a ransom rumored at up to fifty million dollars. Every terrorist escaped, and Carlos was only captured in Sudan nineteen years later. It remains one of the most spectacular terror raids of the twentieth century, and it happened right here, behind these office windows.
Fatti principali
- 3 people killed — Austrian policeman Anton Tichler, an Iraqi security officer and Libyan delegate Yousef Ismirli died in the first minutes of the raid.
- 62 hostages — The commando seized 62 hostages, among them eleven oil ministers, including Saudi Arabia's famous Sheikh Yamani.
- 1994 year — Carlos the Jackal evaded justice until 1994, when he was seized in Sudan; he is now serving life sentences in France.
📍 Universitätsring 10, 1010, Wien