![]() |
Homicide |
Murder |
Note: Varies by jurisdiction |
Assassination · Child murder Consensual homicide Contract killing · Honour killing Lust murder · Lynching Mass murder · Murder-suicide Proxy murder · Ritual murder Serial killer · Spree killer Torture murder · Feticide |
Manslaughter |
in English law Negligent homicide Vehicular homicide |
Non-criminal homicide |
Note: Varies by jurisdiction |
Justifiable homicide Capital punishment Human sacrifice Feticide |
By victim or victims |
Suicide |
Family Familicide · Avunculicide Prolicide
Fratricide / Sororicide(Filicide • Infanticide • Neonaticide) Mariticide / Uxoricide Parricide
(Matricide • Patricide) |
Other Genocide / Democide Gendercide
Regicide / Tyrannicide |
Assassination is the sudden targeted murder of an individual often a prominent person[1] sometimes for ideological or political reasons, though some assassinations demonstrate mental instability. Other motivations may be money (contract killing), revenge, or a military operation.
The assassination euphemism targeted killing (or extrajudicial punishment/execution) is also used for the government-sanctioned killing of opponents.[2]
Assassination may also be used as a form of hyperbole, as in the phrase character assassination, meaning an attempt to impugn another's character, and thus kill, or "assassinate" his reputation and credibility.
Contents |
The term 'Assassin' derives from the Arabic word Hashshashin (Ar: حشاشون \ جماعة الحشاشين),[3] a militant Ismaili Persian Muslim sect, active in the Northern parts of Iran (Alamout) from the eighth to the fourteenth centuries. This mystic secret society killed members of the Abbasid and Seljuq élite for political and religious reasons.[4]
It is popularly believed that the assassins were under the influence of hashish and opium during their killings or during their indoctrination, and that assassin derives from hasishin, the influence of the drugs. However, most Islamic scholars now think this unlikely, and favour the etymology of assassiyun, meaning people who were faithful to the foundation (assass) of the Muslim faith.[5] Another possibility is that they were named hassansin, after their leader, Hassan-i-Sabah. Hashishinnya was a term used by Muslims and Mongolians to characterize this cult.
The earliest known literary use of the term "assassination" is in The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1605).[6][7]
The definition of "assassination" varies among sources. The American Heritage Dictionary defines "to assassinate" thus:
however, the Oxford English Dictionary's definition is:
There is dispute whether the term assassination should include killings wherein the primary motivation is attracting attention to a political cause, and wherein the victim is of secondary importance (and might be famous, but unrelated to the dispute, or even an unknown). This leads to a number of possible definitions - which may however not all apply in any specific case:
For the purposes of this article, the third definition predominates, even though the second is often used, and the first would often be found in colloquial use.
Assassination is one of the oldest tools of power politics, dating back at least as far as recorded history. Perhaps the earliest recorded instance is the murder around 586 BC of Gedaliah, described by Jeremiah and lamented by Jews to this day in the Fast of Gedaliah. Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar can be noted as famous victims. Emperors of Rome often met their end in this way, as did many of the Shia Imams. The practice was also well-known in ancient China. An example of this is Jing Ke's failed assassination of Qin Shi Huang. The ancient Indian military adviser Chanakya wrote about assassinations in detail in his political treatise Arthashastra.
In the Middle Ages, regicide was rare, but with the Renaissance, tyrannicide – or assassination for personal or political reasons - became more common again. The reigns of French kings Henry III and Henry IV, and William the Silent of the Netherlands ended with assassination.
As the world moved into the modern day, the killing of important people began to become more than a tool in power struggles between rulers themselves, and was also used for political symbolism, such as in the propaganda of the deed. In Russia alone, four emperors were assassinated within less than 200 years: Ivan VI, Peter III, Paul I, and Alexander II.
In the U.S., four presidents, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy died at the hands of assassins, while many other presidents survived attempts on their lives.
In Europe the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian nationalist insurgents is blamed for igniting World War I after a succession of minor conflicts, while belligerents on both sides in World War II used operatives specifically trained for assassination. Reinhard Heydrich was killed by Czech partisan killers, and knowledge from decoded transmissions allowed the U.S. to carry out a targeted attack, killing Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto while he was travelling by airplane. Adolf Hitler, meanwhile, was almost killed by his own officers, and survived various attempts by other persons and organizations (such as Operation Foxley, though this plan was never put into practice).
India's "Father of the Nation", Mohandas K. Gandhi, was shot to death on January 30, 1948 by Nathuram Godse, for what Godse perceived as his betrayal of the Hindu cause.[10] In the Philippines, Benigno Aquino, Jr., opposition leader and top critic of Ferdinand Marcos, was shot dead by alleged assassin Rolando Galman as he arrived at Manila International Airport from a three-year exile in the United States, with the death sometimes hailed as the catalyst of the 1986 People Power Revolution that toppled Marcos' 20-year dictatorship.
During the Cold War, there was a dramatic new increase in the number of political assassinations, likely due to the ideological polarization of most of the First and Second worlds, whose adherents were often more than willing to both justify and finance such killings.
Liaquat Ali Khan, the first Prime Minister of Pakistan was assassinated by Saad Akbar, a lone assassin in 1951. Conspiracy theorists believe his conflict with certain members of the Pakistani military (Rawalpindi conspiracy) or suppression of Communists and antagonism towards the Soviet Union, were potential reasons for his assassination.
The U.S. Senate Select Committee chaired by Senator Frank Church (the Church Committee) reported in 1975 that it had found "concrete evidence of at least eight plots involving the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro from 1960 to 1965."[11]
Most major powers were not long in repudiating Cold War assassination tactics, though many allege that this was merely a smokescreen for political benefit and that covert and illegal training of assassins continues today, with Russia, Israel, and other nations accused of still regularly engaging in such operations. In 1986, U.S. President Ronald Reagan (who survived an assassination attempt himself) ordered the Operation El Dorado Canyon air raid on Libya in which one of the primary targets was the home residence of Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi. Gaddafi escaped unharmed; however, his adopted daughter Hanna was one of the civilian casualties.
In the Philippines, the assassination of Benigno Aquino, Jr. triggered the eventual downfall of the 20-year autocratic rule of President Ferdinand Marcos. Aquino, a former Senator and a leading figure of the political opposition, was assassinated in 1983 at the Manila International Airport (now the Ninoy Aquino International Airport) upon returning home from exile. His death thrust his widow, Corazon Aquino, into the limelight and, ultimately, the presidency following the peaceful 1986 EDSA Revolution.
On December 8, 1980 in New York City former Beatle and Musician John Lennon was assassinated by a deranged fan Mark David Chapman. Nearly 20 years after Lennon's Assassination, former Beatle George Harrison had an assassination attempt on his life. On December 30, 1999 Michael Abram broke into the Harrison's home and stabbed Harrison multiple times, ultimately puncturing his lung. Harrison would soon recover from the attack.
On August 17, 1988 President of Pakistan Gen. M. Zia ul Haq died along with his staff and the American Ambassador to Pakistan when his C-130 transport plane exploded in mid-air after taking off from Bahawalpur because of an on-board bomb. The CIA, KGB and Indian secret service RAW all have been implicated by various conspiracy theorists.
Various dictators around the world, such as Saddam Hussein, have also used assassination to remove individual opponents, or to terrorize troublesome population groups. In return, in post-Saddam Iraq, the Shiite-dominated government has used death squads to perform countless extrajudicial executions of radical Sunni Iraqis, with some alleging that the death squads were trained by the U.S.[12][13][14]
In India, Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi (neither of whom were related to Mohandas Gandhi), were assassinated in 1984 and 1991. The assassinations were linked to separatist movements in Punjab and northern Sri Lanka, respectively.
In Israel, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated on November 4, 1995. Yigal Amir confessed and was convicted of the crime. Many questions were subsequently raised about the actual cause of and rationale for his death.
In Lebanon, the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on February 14, 2005, prompted an investigation by the United Nations. The suggestions in the resulting Mehlis report, that there was Syrian involvement, prompted the Cedar Revolution which drove Syrian troops out of Lebanon.
In Pakistan, former prime minister and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in 2007, while in the process of running for re-election. Bhutto's assassination drew unanimous condemnation from the international community.[15]
Assassination for military purposes has long been espoused - Sun Tzu, writing around 500 B.C., argued in favor of using assassination in his book The Art of War. Nearly 2000 years later Machiavelli also argued assassination could be useful in his book The Prince. In medieval times, an army and even a nation might be based upon and around a particularly strong, canny or charismatic leader, whose loss could paralyze the ability of both to make war. However, in modern warfare a soldier's mindset is generally considered to surround ideals far more than specific leaders, while command structures are more flexible in replacing officer losses. While the death of a popular or successful leader often has a detrimental effect on morale, the organisational system and the belief in a specific cause is usually strong enough to enable continued warfare.
There is also the risk that the target could be replaced by an even more competent leader or that such a killing (or a failed attempt) will "martyr" a leader and support his cause (by showing the moral ruthlessness of the assassins). Faced with particularly brilliant leaders, this possibility has in various instances been risked, such as in the attempts to kill the Athenian Alcibiades during the Peloponnesian War. There are a number of additional examples from World War II which show how assassination was used as a military tool at both tactical and strategic levels:
Use of assassination has continued in more recent conflicts:
Insurgent groups have often employed assassination as a tool to further their causes. Assassinations provide several functions for such groups, namely the removal of specific enemies and as propaganda tools to focus the attention of media and politics on their cause.
The Irish Republican Army guerrillas of 1919–1921 assassinated many RIC Police Intelligence officers during the Irish War of Independence. Michael Collins set up a special unit - the Squad - for this purpose, which had the effect of intimidating many policemen into resigning from the force. The Squad's activities peaked with the assassination of 14 British agents in Dublin on Bloody Sunday in 1920.
This tactic was used again by the Provisional IRA during the Troubles in Northern Ireland (1969-present). Assassination of RUC officers and politicians was one of a number of methods used in the Provisional IRA campaign 1969-1997. The IRA also attempted to assassinate British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher by bombing the Conservative Party Conference in a Brighton hotel. Loyalist paramilitaries retaliated by killing Catholics at random and assassinating Irish nationalist politicians.
Basque separatists ETA in Spain have assassinated many security and political figures since the late 1960s, notably Luis Carrero Blanco in 1973. Since the early 1990s, they have also targeted academics, journalists and local politicians who publicly disagreed with them, meaning that many needed armed police bodyguards.
The Red Brigades in Italy carried out assassinations of political figures, as to a lesser extent, did the Red Army Faction in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s.
Middle Eastern groups, such as the PLO and Hezbollah, have all engaged in assassinations, though the higher intensity of armed conflict in the region compared to western Europe means that many of their actions are either better characterized as guerrilla operations or as random attacks on civilians - especially the technique of suicide bombs.
In the Vietnam War, assassinations were routinely carried out by communist insurgents against government officials and individual civilians deemed to offend or rival the revolutionary movement. Such attacks, along with widespread military activity by insurgent bands, almost brought the Diem regime to collapse before the US intervention.[19]
Individually, too, people have often found reasons to arrange the deaths of others through paid intermediaries. One who kills with no political motive or group loyalty, only for money, is known as a hitman, or contract killer. Note that by the definition accepted above, while such a killer is not, strictly speaking, an assassin, if the killing is ordered and financed towards a political end, then that killing must rightly be termed an assassination, and the hitman an assassin by extension.
Entire organizations have sometimes specialized in assassination as one of their services, to be gained for the right price. Besides the original hashshashin, the ninja clans of Japan were rumored to perform assassinations, though it can be pointed out that most of what was ever known about the ninja was rumor and hearsay.
In the United States, Murder, Inc., an organization partnered to the Mafia, was formed for the sole purpose of performing assassinations for organized crime. In Russia, the vory (thieves), Russian organised crime syndicates, are often known to provide assassinations for the right price, as well as engaging in it themselves for their own purposes. A professional hitman is called "cleaner" in Russia; he is used to clean away the target. The Finnish as well as the Swedish underworld uses the word "torpedo" for a contract killer.
Racist groups have often employed assassination as a tool to further their causes. In the United States in 1968 African-American Baptist minister and civil rights activist Martin Luther King was assassinated after having received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his work to end segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means.
The use of assassinations for political or military reasons by sovereign states is an extremely contentious subject, with opinions ranging from people considering it a legitimate form of defense, especially against non-state actors like terror groups, to people calling targeted killings state terrorism itself. Both those for and against targeted killings are also often faced with accusations of being clearly partisan to one side of the particular struggle discussed.
Targeted killings are also sometimes called 'extrajudicial punishment',[26] though some states require some form of judicial trial in absentia before such an undertaking.
A major study about assassination attempts in the US in the second half of the 20th century came to the conclusion that most prospective assassins spend copious amounts of time planning and preparing for their attempts. Assassinations are thus rarely a case of 'impulsive' action.[27]
However, about 25% of the actual attackers were found to be delusional, a figure that rose to 60% with 'near-lethal approachers' (people apprehended before reaching their target). This incidentally shows that while mental instability plays a role in many modern-age assassinations, the more delusional attackers are less likely to succeed in their attempt. The report also found that around two thirds of the attackers had previously been arrested for (not necessarily related) offenses, that around 44% had a history of serious depression, and that 39% had a history of substance abuse.[27]
It seems likely that the first assassinations would have been direct and simple: stabbing, strangling or bludgeoning. Substantial planning or coordination would rarely have been involved, as tribal groups were too small, and the connection to the leaders too close. As civilization took root, however, leaders began to have greater importance, and become more detached from the groups they ruled. This would have brought planning, subterfuge and weapons into successful assassination plans.
The key technique was likely infiltration, with the actual assassination by stabbing, smothering or strangulation. Poisons also started to be used in many forms. Death cap mushrooms and similar plants became a traditional choice of assassins especially if they could not be perceived as poisonous by taste, and the symptoms of the poisoning did not show until after some time.
In ancient Rome, paid mobs were sometimes used to beat political enemies to death.
With the advent of effective ranged weaponry, and later firearms, the position of an assassination target was more precarious. Bodyguards were no longer enough to hold back determined killers, who no longer needed to directly engage or even subvert the guard to kill the leader in question. Moreover, the engagement of targets at greater distance dramatically increased the chances for an assassin's survival. It is considered that William the Silent of the Netherlands was the first leader assassinated by firearms (July 10, 1584).
Gunpowder and other explosives also allowed the use of bombs or even greater concentrations of explosives for deeds requiring a larger touch; for an example, the Gunpowder Plot could have 'assassinated' almost a thousand people had it not been foiled.
Explosives, especially the car bomb, become far more common in modern history, with grenades and remote-triggered landmines also used, especially in the Middle East and Balkans (the initial attempt on Archduke Franz Ferdinand's life was with a grenade). With heavy weapons, the rocket propelled grenade (RPG) has became a useful tool given the popularity of armored cars (discussed below), while Israeli forces have pioneered the use of aircraft-mounted missiles for assassination,[28] as well as the innovative use of explosive devices.
A sniper with a precision rifle is often used in fictional assassinations. However, there are certain difficulties associated with long-range shooting, including finding a hidden shooting position with a clear line-of-sight, detailed advance knowledge of the intended victim's travel plans, the ability to identify the target at long range, and the ability to score a first-round lethal hit at long range, usually measured in hundreds of meters. A dedicated sniper rifle is also expensive and hard to acquire, often costing thousands of dollars because of the high level of precision machining and hand-finishing required to achieve extreme accuracy.[29]
Despite their comparative disadvantages, easy-to-acquire and hard-to-trace handguns are much more commonly used than rifles. Of 74 principal incidents evaluated in a major study about assassination attempts in the US in the second half of the 20th century, 51% were undertaken by a handgun, 30% with a rifle or shotgun, while 15% of the attempts used knives and 8% explosives (usage of multiple weapons/methods was reported in 16% of all cases).[27]
In the case of state-sponsored assassination, poisoning offers the greatest level of deniability (the allegations are rarely proven). Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident was assassinated by ricin poisoning. A tiny pellet containing the poison was injected into his leg. Widespread allegations involving the Bulgarian government and KGB have not led to any legal results. The CIA has allegedly made several attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, many of the schemes involving poisoning. A 2006 case in the UK concerned the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko who was given a lethal dose of radioactive polonium-210, possibly passed to him in aerosol form sprayed directly onto his food. Litvinenko, a former KGB agent, had been granted asylum in the UK in 2000 after citing persecution in Russia. Shortly before his death he issued a statement accusing Vladimir Putin, who was the Russian president at the time, of involvement in his assassination. President Putin denies he had any part in Litvinenko's death.[30]
One of the earliest forms of defense against assassins is without doubt the bodyguard. He acts as a shield for the potential target, keeps lookout for potential attackers (sometimes in advance, for example on a planned tour), and is literally supposed to put himself 'in harm's way' - both by his simple presence, forming a barrier in front of the target[27][31] and by shielding the target during any attack. He is also, if possible, to neutralize an attacker as fast as possible, and thus often carries weapons (where legal or possible).
This bodyguard function was often executed by the leader's most loyal warriors, and was extremely effective throughout most of early human history, leading to attempts by subterfuge, such as poison (which was answered by the food taster).
Other notable measures include Shadowing by recruiting similar looking persons to be the apparent figure in public occasions. Examples can be found in Chinese and Japanese history.
Notable examples of bodyguards would include the Roman Praetorian Guard or the Ottoman janissaries - although, in both cases, it should be noted that the protectors often became assassins themselves, exploiting their power to make the head of state a virtual hostage at their whim or eliminating threatening leaders altogether. The fidelity of individual bodyguards is an important question as well, especially for leaders who oversee states with strong ethnic or religious divisions. Failure to realize such divided loyalties leads to assassinations such as that of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards in 1984.
With the advent of gunpowder, ranged assassination (via bombs or firearms) became possible. One of the first reactions was to simply increase the guard, creating what at times might seem a small army trailing every leader; another was to begin clearing large areas whenever a leader was present, to the point where entire sections of a city might be shut down.
As the 20th century dawned, the prevalence of assassins and their capabilities skyrocketed, and so did measures to protect against them. For the first time, armored cars or armored limousines were put into service for safer transport, with modern versions rendering them virtually invulnerable to small arms fire and smaller bombs and mines.[32] Bulletproof vests also began to be used, though they were of limited utility, restricting movement and leaving the head unprotected - as such they tended to be worn only during high-profile public events if at all.
Access to famous persons, too, became more and more restrictive;[33] potential visitors would be forced through numerous different checks before being granted access to the official in question, and as communication became better and information technology more prevalent, it has become all but impossible for a would-be killer to get close enough to the personage at work or in private life to effect an attempt on his or her life, especially given the common use of metal and bomb detectors.
Most modern assassinations have been committed either during a public performance or during transport, both because of weaker security and security lapses, such as with US President John F. Kennedy and former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, or as part of coups d'état where security is either overwhelmed or completely removed, such as with Patrice Lumumba and likely Salvador Allende.[34]
The methods used for protection by famous people have sometimes evoked negative reactions by the public, with some resenting the separation from their officials or major figures. One example might be traveling in a car protected by a bubble of clear bulletproof glass, such as the Popemobile of Pope John Paul II (built following an extremist's attempt at his life). Politicians themselves often resent this need for separation - which has at times caused tragedy when they sent their bodyguards from their side for personal or publicity reasons, as U.S. President William McKinley did during the public reception at which he was assassinated.[33]
Other potential targets go into seclusion, and are rarely heard from or seen in public, such as writer Salman Rushdie. A related form of protection is the use of body doubles, a person built similar to the person he is expected to impersonate. These persons are then made up, as well as in some cases altered to look like the target, with the body double then taking the place of the person in high risk situations. Saddam Hussein is known to have used body doubles.[35] According to Joe R. Reeder, a former under secretary for the U.S. Army from 1993–1997 writing in Fox News, Fidel Castro had also used body doubles, though no details were specified.[35]
In the final analysis, countermeasures can never be fully effective. If the assassin is committed beyond reason (i.e. insane) or without concern for his own for self-preservation (suicide attacker), then the task of protecting a person will be made much more difficult.