MY LOVE FOR THE JACKAL; GEORGE CLARE MEETS MAGDALENA KOPP, THE WOMAN WHO ONCE SHARED HER LIFE WITH THE WORLD'S MOST NOTORIOUS TERRORIST.

The wife of Carlos the Jackal has opened her heart about life on the run with the notorious terrorist. And she issued this chilling warning: "If he ever gets out of jail he'll continue doing what he believes in. There will be more bombs and killings."

Magdalena Kopp's decision to talk about Carlos - real name Ilich Ramirez Sanchez - comes days after the start of his trial in Paris on three murder charges.

But Magdalena, a former Baader-Meinhof terrorist said: "I still love him and I don't regret any of my life.

"I know what he's done but it makes no difference.

"I wouldn't swap my life for anyone - it's been incredible."

At the height of The Jackal's reign of terror in the Seventies, Magdalena shared a luxury lifestyle with Carlos.

Now her home is a cheaply-furnished flat in Germany with their 11-year-old daughter Rosa and her sick and elderly mother.

But she lives in fear that terrorists Carlos has fallen out with might kidnap the child.

German authorities are considering giving Magdalena and her daughter a 24-hour armed guard.

"My daughter goes everywhere with me - I never let her out of my sight," she says, nervously puffing on a cigarette in the tiny kitchen of her house on a dreary grey windswept estate.

Carlos, 48, still writes dozens of love letters to 50-year-old Magdalena from his cell.

But she gave a chilling account of his current mentality. "He doesn't regret a thing," she said. "He is still very committed. He has not changed. His beliefs are the same.

"If he was in this room now he would try hard to convince us that what he did was all in a good cause.

"If he ever got out he would continue doing what he believes in. I don't think he could ever adapt to life on the outside. But he will never get out again.

"He is alone in prison with his thoughts and his ideals and they are simply growing stronger and stronger.

"He believes he was right. He is focused. He would never commit suicide.

"It is his spirit that keeps him going. He will never give up."

Magdalena insists that Rosa is still the apple of her evil father's eye.

Until he was arrested in Sudan by French secret agents in 1994, Carlos never once failed to contact Rosa on her birthday and she always received a generous gift from him. But Magdalena has hidden the truth about Carlos from Rosa.

"I have told my daughter that her father is in prison for stealing," she said. "She will see him one day but not yet. Now is not the time.

"Maybe when she is older I'll tell her. I don't know if she'll ever see him again. She loves her father. She remembers the good times in Venezuela.

"But she has a temper like her father. She always wants to be the centre of attention."

Magdalena insists that Rosa will have a normal life despite everything.

"My daughter is the only thing that truly matters. I want her to be a normal person like any mother. I want her to have a happy childhood."

Magdalena's romance with Carlos was a bizarre combination of love, lust, greed and death among a backdrop of cold-blooded terrorism that claimed dozens of lives.

Venezuelan-born Carlos - credited with killing 83 people and injuring hundreds of others - swept Magdalena off her feet when he stole her from a rival terrorist.

But when she first met him in East Berlin in 1981 she was less than impressed.

"He was arrogant," she said. "I was a hippy at the time, paying no attention to my clothes or appearance.

"I had no style, no money. He was so different. He always dressed in a suit and tie and had short hair while we all had long hair. He was very slick.

"He was younger than I was but he looked much older. He was so different and I was a very frustrated lady. He made a lot of effort to get me at the beginning with meals and flowers.

"Carlos never believed he was wrong about his work. He was always right. That's the Latin male for you. He was like that with everything, controlling me."

Magdalena says that when Carlos left her to go into hiding before his arrest "the fun went out of my life".

In the mid-1980s, when Magdalena was arrested in Paris on suspicion of terrorist activities, Carlos was so incensed he launched his own one- man war against the French Government that resulted in numerous terrorist outrages,

"Carlos killed people for me - that's how much in love we were," she said. "He would do anything to get me back then."

After Magdalena's release from prison, she returned to the Jackal's side as he planned more atrocities.

Then the terrorism "business" suffered a slump in the late 1980s and Carlos, Magdalena and little Rosa headed for a life of luxury in Venezuela before being forced to flee back to the sanctity of various Middle East countries.

Magdalena was convinced Carlos was completely safe in his hideaway in Khartoum and never expected the French swoop that resulted in his dramatic arrest.

"He thought he was totally safe," said Magdalena. "He was out in nightclubs living a fantastic life."

Now Carlos is charged with murdering two French secret agents and a Lebanese informer but other trials are expected to follow.

He is also credited with the attempted murder in London of Edward Sieff, then head of Marks & Spencer.

He has been blamed for organising the occupation of the French Embassy in the Hague, the bombing of a Paris store in 1974 and two failed rocket attacks on Israeli airliners at Orly Airport.

In 1975, he was said to have pulled off his most spectacular raid, kidnapping 11 oil ministers at an OPEC meeting in Vienna.

Magdalena also disclosed the amazing story of how - after his arrest - Carlos forced her to track down a woman he wanted to marry even though they have never divorced.

She calmly recalled: "He told me I had to look for her so I followed his instructions and tracked her down.

"I thought that he would go crazy if I didn't find her. I was under his spell. I can't explain why I did it."

"I was in love with him so I did what he asked. I found the woman.

"He even gave many clues away in his letters to me from prison which would have provided his enemies with information about who she was.

"When I found her for him I wrote to him and told him where she was.

"They were legally married in a Muslim marriage inside prison. She is a nice woman but has never been back to see him."

Magdalena admits that Carlos refers to her as "one of his wives".

But she adds, "I will be his wife forever. I have no doubt of that.

"You see, Carlos having another wife was not the problem. There were other things far more troubling.

"In his letters he talked of his love for me. Yet I knew his morals were non-existent. He believed so much in himself.

"He wrote to me and he told me, 'I have two wives but I am not a bigamist'.

"He still loved me. I was the senior wife. He had converted to Islam and believed he could have as many as five wives.

"He sees it whatever way suits him. He's a communist but he enjoys a luxury lifestyle. It is a big contradiction. It works for him."

Magdalena claims that Carlos's obsession with a playboy lifestyle was fuelled by being treated like virtual royalty by many of the Arab world's leaders.

"In Libya he was treated like a god then Gadaffi turned his back on him," she said. She claims that other leaders like President Assad of Syria also abandoned Carlos in the early 1990s.

"Nobody wanted to know him any more," she said. "They all distanced themselves from him. The Americans made them abandon him."

Then Carlos dared to confront Gaddafi, according to Magdalena.

"They had a very big argument," she said. "Gadaffi was furious and I thought they were going to come after us and kill us. I know that Carlos will never forgive Gadaffi and has sworn revenge on him. They hate each other now."

Initially, not even the closest associates of Carlos were aware of his romance with Magdalana.

The master terrorist feared that his rivals would kidnap her and hold her hostage to keep him under control.

But the bond of love between the Venezuelan killer and Magdalena grew even closer, she says, when she helped him avoid being assassinated by the French Government in a crackpot scheme to bring Carlos's bloody reign to a close.

Eventually, they married in a secret ceremony in Syria in 1985.

But despite her love for Carlos, she says her life of terrorism has ended

"It was another world. It seems so unreal to me now. I don't think about it now. I just carry on with my new life."

Magdalena truly believes her husband was a world leader in every sense at that time. He was certainly treated like one in many Arab states.

"That was significant," she said. "We were removed from Syria so the Syrians could become friends with the Americans. That's how important Carlos was.

"I don't regret a minute of it. I know he did many bad things but I loved him like I loved no other man.

"Carlos knows what I think of him and that I will show the world what he was really like.

"But there are certain things I could never talk about."

Those incidents undoubtedly include killing people. Magdalena hints at this when she says: "The worst thing I saw I could never tell you about."

She may also be referring to the time when she was a member of the Red Army Faction, as the notorious Baader-Meinhof group preferred to be known in the early Seventies.

Magdalena says she has put her life of death and mayhem behind her.

She now lives quietly with Rosa and her mum in Neu Ulm, south-west Germany, just across the Danube from the old cathedral city of Ulm.

"My life now revolves around looking after my sick mother and daughter," she said.

"I have gone full circle. Back where I suppose I belong.

"I don't need that kind of life any more. I've had enough excitement for five life times. But it's over."

Yet she admits she thrived on the energy of terrorism for so long that it is impossible to close the book on that chapter.

Since arriving back in Neu Ulm, her presence has reached almost legendary proportions. People whisper when they see her in the street.

Looking back, Magdalena says that Carlos's biggest disappointment is that his French captors did not have the courage to shoot him when they snatched him in Khartoum.

"He is not afraid to die. In some ways it would have been easier for him."

She added like a lovelorn schoolgirl: "You would be fascinated if Carlos was in this room with us.

"He would transfix you with his knowledge of the political scene throughout the world. He is a very intelligent man and very educated.

"He has a good memory for dates and names, anything.

"He has the ability to reorganise things brilliantly but in the end he made some horrible mistakes.

"Maybe subconsciously he wanted to be caught and got careless."

Magdalena is still haunted by her marriage to Carlos.

"I don't know why I fell for him. I ask myself this question over and over.

"But he knew how to treat a woman and was very romantic. He was my perfect Latin lover.

"The happiest days of my life were with Carlos. One side of me hasn't yet let go of him.

"But now I'll never see him again."

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Title Annotation:	Features
Author:	Clare, George
Publication:	The People (London, England)
Date:	Dec 21, 1997
Words:	1998
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