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The Queen’s Grove property that could be rebuilt |
Infamous ‘Jackal’ house may have had its day...
Owner wants to pull down home where hitman shot M&S boss
IT has achieved cult status among “followers” of the world’s most notorious terrorist.
But the luxury St John’s Wood mansion, where Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, aka Carlos the Jackal, carried out his first hit, could be demolished under plans lodged with City Hall this week.
The owners of 48 Queen’s Grove want to build a modern family home – complete with swimming pool, games room and servants’ quarters – in the leafy street targeted by the Venezuelan 25 years ago.
As president of Marks and Spencer and the British Zionist Federation, the home’s owner, Joseph Edward Sieff, was a suitable target for the trigger-happy member of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine.
Sieff had been told by Scotland Yard to watch out for booby-trapped mail, but on December 20, 1973, he was in the bath when the doorbell rang.
A Portuguese butler answered the door to the man in his mid-20s armed with an Italian-made, 9mm Beretta pistol.
He forced his way up the steps and shot Sieff in the face from point-blank range.
Sanchez was nicknamed Jackal by the press after a copy of Frederick Forsyth’s novel The Day of the Jackal was found among his possessions.
The build-up to the cold-blooded attack is described in crime writer John Follians’ best-selling biography The Complete Story of the Legendary Terrorist: Carlos the Jackal.
He wrote: “The man swung open the wrought-iron gate at number 48 Queen’s Grove and walked up the paved path to the porticoed entrance of a mock-Georgian mansion.
“Two imposing columns flanked the entrance, which was topped by a white frieze of a deer resting gracefully outside.”
Sanchez failed in his mission, when his pistol jammed after the first shot and Sieff survived. It was the first in a series of bungled missions.
He was charged with masterminding a series of bombings, kidnappings and hijackings in the 1970s in support of the Palestinian cause and murdering two policemen in Paris. He was jailed for life in 1997. |
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