| Homicide |
|---|
| Murder |
| Note: Varies by jurisdiction |
| Assassination · Child murder Consensual homicide Contract killing · Felony murder rule Honor killing · Human sacrifice (Child) Lust murder · Lynching Mass murder · Murder–suicide Proxy murder · Lonely hearts killer Serial killer · Spree killer Torture murder · Feticide Double murder · Misdemeanor murder Crime of passion · Internet homicide Depraved-heart murder |
| Manslaughter |
| in English law Negligent homicide Vehicular homicide |
| Non-criminal homicide |
| Note: Varies by jurisdiction |
| Justifiable homicide Capital punishment Human sacrifice Feticide Medicide |
| By victim or victims |
| Suicide |
| Family |
| Other |
To carry out an assassination is "to murder (a usually prominent person) by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons."[1][2] Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."
An assassination may be prompted by religious, ideological, political, or military motives; it may be carried out for the prospect of financial gain, to avenge a grievance, from the desire to acquire fame or notoriety (that is, a psychological need to garner personal public recognition), from the wish to form some kind of "relationship" with a public figure, or from the desire (or at least the willingness) to be killed or commit suicide in the act.
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The word assassin is derived from the word Hashshashin (Arabic: حشّاشين, ħashshāshīyīn, also Hashishin, Hashashiyyin, or Assassins),[3] and shares its etymological roots with hashish ( /hæˈʃiːʃ/ or /ˈhæʃiːʃ/; from Persian: حشيش ḥashīsh).[4] It referred to a group that was part of the Nizari branch of the Ismā'īlī Shia. Founded by the Persian Hassan-i Sabbah, the Hashshashin were active in the fortress of Alamut in Iran from the 8th to the 14th centuries, and also controlled the castle of Masyaf in Syria. The group killed members of the Muslim Abbasid, Seljuq, and Christian Crusader élite for political and religious reasons.[5] Although it is commonly believed that assassins were under the influence of hashish during their killings or during their indoctrination, there is debate whether these claims have merit.[6] The Assassins were eradicated by the Mongol Empire in 1275.
The earliest known literary use of the word assassination is in Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1605).[7][8]
Assassination is one of the oldest tools of power politics. It dates back at least as far as recorded history.
Perhaps the earliest-recorded instance is the murder of Moabite King Eglon, by Ehud around 1337 BC, described in the Book of Judges. Philip II of Macedon (336 BC), the father of Alexander the Great, and Roman consul Julius Caesar (44 BC) are famous victims.[9] Emperors of Rome often met their end in this way, as did many of the Muslim Shia Imams hundreds of years later. The practice was also well known in ancient China, as in Jing Ke's failed assassination of King Qin Shi Huang (227 BC). In ancient India Chanakya wrote about assassinations in his political treatise Arthashastra. In 1192, Conrad of Montferrat, the de facto King of Jerusalem, was assassinated by hashshashin.
The Old Testament story of Judith illustrates how a woman frees the Israelites by tricking and assassinating Holofernes, a war-lord of the rival Assyrians with whom the Israelites were at war.
In the Middle Ages, regicide was rare in Western Europe, but it was a recurring theme in the Eastern Roman Empire. Blinding and strangling in the bathtub were the most commonly used procedures. With the Renaissance, tyrannicide—or assassination for personal or political reasons—became more common again in Western Europe. The reigns of King Przemysł II of Poland (1296), William the Silent of the Netherlands (1584), and the French kings Henry III (1589) and Henry IV (1610) ended with assassination. High medieval sources also mention the assassination of king Demetrius Zvonimir (1089), dying at the hands of his own people who objected to a proposition by the Pope to go on a campaign to aid the Byzantines against the Seljuk Turks. This is, however, broadly debated among historians since most do not accept this view of his death; it is most commonly asserted that he died of natural causes. The myth of the "Curse of King Zvonimir" is based on the legend of his assassination.[10]
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 United States, within 100 years, four presidents, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy, died at the hands of assassins. There have been at least 20 known attempts on U.S. presidents' lives.
In Europe, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian nationalist insurgents (The Black Hand) 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 after an attack by British trained Czechoslovak soldiers on behalf of the Czechoslovak government in exile in Operation Anthropoid,[11] 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 plane. The Polish Home Army conducted a regular campaign of assassinations against top Nazi German officials in occupied Poland. 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).
During the 1930s and 1940s Joseph Stalin's NKVD carried out numerous assassinations outside of the Soviet Union, such as the killings of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists leader Yevhen Konovalets, Ignace Poretsky, Fourth International secretary Rudolf Klement, Leon Trotsky, and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) leadership in Catalonia.[12]
India's "Father of the Nation," Mohandas K. Gandhi, was shot to death in 1948 by Nathuram Godse.
An American Civil rights activist, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968 by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee.
During the Cold War, there was a dramatic new increase in the number of political assassinations.
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.
In 1960, Inejiro Asanuma, Chairman of the Japanese Socialist Party, was assassinated in a stabbing by an extreme rightist.
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."[13]
Most major powers repudiated 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, the U.S., Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and other nations accused of still regularly engaging in such operations.[14] 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 claimed to be 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.
After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the new Islamic government of Iran began an international campaign of assassination that lasted into the 1990s. At least 162 killings in 19 countries have been linked to the senior leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran.[15] This campaign came to an end after the Mykonos restaurant assassinations, because a German court publicly implicated senior members of the government and issued arrest warrants for Ali Fallahian, the head of the Iranian Intelligence.[16] Evidence indicates that Fallahian’s personal involvement and individual responsibility for the murders were far more pervasive than his current indictment record represents.[17]
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.
In post-Saddam Iraq, the Shiite-dominated government used death squads to perform extrajudicial executions of radical Sunni Iraqis, with some alleging that the death squads were trained by the U.S.[18][19] Concrete allegations have since surfaced that the Iranian government has actively armed and funded Shia death-squads in post-Saddam Iraq.[20]
In India, Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi (neither of whom were related to Mohandas Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1948), were assassinated in 1984 and 1991 respectively. 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.
Israeli tourist minister Rehavam Ze'evi was assassinated on October 17, 2001, by Hamdi Quran and three other members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP stated that the assassination was in retaliation for the August 27, 2001, killing of Abu Ali Mustafa, the Secretary General of the PFLP, by the Israeli Air Force under its policy of targeted killings.
In Lebanon, the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on February 14, 2005, prompted an investigation by the United Nations. The suggestion 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.[21]
In Guinea Bissau, President João Bernardo Vieira was assassinated in the early hours of March 2, 2009, in the capital, Bissau. Unlike typical assassinations his death was not swift; he first survived an explosion at the Presidential Villa, was then shot and wounded, and finally was butchered with machetes. His assassination was carried out by renegade soldiers who were apparently revenging the killing of General Tagme Na Waie, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of Guinea Bissau, who had been killed in a bomb explosion the day before.
Assassination for military purposes has long been espoused – Sun Tzu, writing around 500 BC, 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.
There is also the risk that the target could be replaced by an even more competent leader or 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. A number of additional examples from World War II 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 1919–21 killed 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 killing 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). Killing of RUC officers and assassination of RUC 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 terrorists ETA in Spain have assassinated many security and political figures since the late 1960s, notably Luis Carrero Blanco, 1st Duke of Carrero-Blanco Grandee of Spain, in 1973. Since the early 1990s, they have also targeted academics, journalists and local politicians who publicly disagreed with them.
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.
Israel has assassinated Hamas and Hezbollah leaders.
In the Vietnam War, Communist insurgents routinely assassinated 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 U.S. intervention.[23]
A major study about assassination attempts in the U.S. 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.[24]
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 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 attackers had previously been arrested for (not necessarily related) offenses, that 44% had a history of serious depression, and that 39% had a history of substance abuse.[24]
It seems likely that the first assassinations would have been direct and simple: stabbing, strangling or bludgeoning. 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 of an assassin's survival. The first heads of government to be assassinated with a firearm were the Regent Moray of Scotland in 1570, and William the Silent, the Prince of Orange of the Netherlands in 1584. Gunpowder and other explosives also allowed the use of bombs or even greater concentrations of explosives for deeds requiring a larger touch.
Explosives, especially the car bomb, become far more common in modern history, with grenades and remote-triggered land mines 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 become a useful tool given the popularity of armored cars (discussed below), while Israeli forces have pioneered the use of aircraft-mounted missiles,[25] as well as the innovative use of explosive devices.
A sniper with a precision rifle is often used in fictional assassinations. However, certain difficulties attend 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, often costing thousands of dollars because of the high level of precision machining and hand-finishing required to achieve extreme accuracy.[26]
Despite their comparative disadvantages, handguns are more easily concealable, and consequentially much more commonly used than rifles. Of 74 principal incidents evaluated in a major study about assassination attempts in the U.S. in the second half of the 20th century, 51% were undertaken by a handgun, 30% with a rifle or shotgun, 15% used knives, and 8% explosives (usage of multiple weapons/methods was reported in 16% of all cases).[24]
In the case of state-sponsored assassination, poisoning can be more easily denied. Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident was assassinated by ricin poisoning. A tiny pellet containing the poison was injected into his leg through a specially designed umbrella. Widespread allegations involving the Bulgarian government and KGB have not led to any legal results. However, it was learned that after fall of the USSR, the KGB had developed an umbrella that could inject ricin pellets into a victim, and two former KGB agents who defected said the agency assisted in the murder.[27] The CIA has allegedly made several attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, many of the schemes involving poisoning his cigars. In the late 1950s, KGB assassin Bohdan Stashynsky killed Ukrainian nationalist leaders Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera with a spray gun that fired a jet of poison gas from a crushed cyanide ampule, making their deaths look like heart attacks.[28] 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 then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin of involvement in his assassination. President Putin denies he had any part in Litvinenko's death.[29]
James Bell proposed "Assassination Politics" both as a political idea and as a logical consequence of anonymous cash.[30] Essentially anonymous contributors fund those who can predict the time and manner of a given person's death; the "predictor" is also paid anonymously.
Targeted killing is the intentional killing–by a government or its agents–of a civilian or "unlawful combatant" targeted by the government, who is not in the government's custody. The target is a person taking part in an armed conflict or terrorism, whether by bearing arms or otherwise, who has thereby lost the immunity from being targeted that he would otherwise have under the Third Geneva Convention.[31] Note that this is a different term and concept from that of "targeted violence" as used by specialists who study violence.
Ibrahim Nafie, writing in Egypt's Al-Ahram Weekly in 2001, criticized the U.S. for agreeing with "the Israeli spin that calls ... its official policy of assassinating Palestinian leaders 'targeted killing.'"[32]
On the other hand, Georgetown Law Professor Gary Solis, in his 2010 book entitled The Law of Armed Conflict: International Humanitarian Law in War,[33] writes: "Assassinations and targeted killings are very different acts".[31] The use of the term assassination is opposed, as it denotes murder, whereas the terrorists are targeted in self-defense, and thus it is viewed as a killing, but not a crime.[34] Judge Abraham Sofaer, former federal judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, wrote on the subject:
When people call a targeted killing an "assassination," they are attempting to preclude debate on the merits of the action. Assassination is widely defined as murder, and is for that reason prohibited in the United States.... U.S. officials may not kill people merely because their policies are seen as detrimental to our interests.... But killings in self-defense are no more "assassinations" in international affairs than they are murders when undertaken by our police forces against domestic killers. Targeted killings in self-defense have been authoritatively determined by the federal government to fall outside the assassination prohibition.[35]
In The Impact of 9/11 and the New Legal Landscape: The Day That Changed Everything?,[36] the point is made that "There is a major difference between assassination and targeted killing.... targeted killing [is] not synonymous with assassination. Assassination ... constitutes an illegal killing."[37] Similarly, Amos Guiora, Professor of law at the University of Utah, writes: "Targeted killing is ... not an assassination", Steve David, Johns Hopkins Associate Dean & Professor of International Relations, writes: "there are strong reasons to believe that the Israeli policy of targeted killing is not the same as assassination", Syracuse Law Professor William Banks and GW Law Professor Peter Raven-Hansen write: "Targeted killing of terrorists is ... not unlawful and would not constitute assassination", Rory Miller writes: "Targeted killing ... is not 'assassination'", and Associate Professor Eric Patterson and Teresa Casale write: "Perhaps most important is the legal distinction between targeted killing and assassination".[38][39][40][40][41]
Targeted killing has been used by governments around the world, and become a frequent tactic of the United States and Israel in their fight against terrorism.[31][42] The tactic can raise complex questions and lead to contentious disputes as to the legal basis for its application, who qualifies as an appropriate "hit list" target, and what circumstances must exist before the tactic may be employed.[31] Opinions range from people considering it a legal form of self-defense that reduces terrorism, to people calling it an extra-judicial killing that lack due process, and which leads to more violence.[31][35][43][44] Methods used have included firing a five-foot-long Hellfire missile from a Predator or Reaper drone (an unmanned, remote-controlled plane), detonating a cell phone bomb, and long-range sniper shooting. Countries such as the U.S. (in Pakistan and Yemen) and Israel (in the West Bank and Gaza) have used targeted killing to kill members of groups such as Al-Qaeda and Hamas.[31] In early 2010, with President Obama's approval, Anwar al-Awlaki became the first U.S. citizen to be approved for targeted killing by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).[45][46]
One of the earliest forms of defense against assassins was employing bodyguards. Bodyguards act as a shield for the potential target, keeping lookout for potential attackers (sometimes in advance, for example on a parade route), and putting themselves in harm's way—both by simple presence, showing that physical force is available to protect the target,[24][47] and by shielding the target during any attack. To neutralize an attacker, bodyguards are typically armed as much as legal and practical concerns permit.
This bodyguard function was often executed by the leader's most loyal warriors, and was extremely effective throughout most of early human history, leading assassins to attempt stealthy means, such as poison (which risk was answered by having another person taste the leader's food first).
Another notable measure is the use of a body double, a person who looks like the leader and who pretends to be the leader to draw attention away from the intended target.
Notable examples of bodyguards include the Roman Praetorian Guard or the Ottoman Janissaries—though, in both cases, the protectors sometimes became assassins themselves, exploiting their power to make the head of state a virtual hostage or killing the very leaders they were supposed to protect. 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 led to the assassination 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 and capability of assassins grew quickly, as did measures to protect against them. For the first time, armored cars or limousines were put into service for safer transport, with modern versions virtually invulnerable to small arms fire, smaller bombs and mines.[48] Bulletproof vests also began to be used, which were of limited utility, restricting movement and leaving the head unprotected – so they only tended to be worn during high-profile public events, if at all.
Access to famous persons, too, became more and more restricted;[49] 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 U.S. 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.[50]
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 attempt at his life. Politicians often resent this need for separation – sometimes sending their bodyguards away from them for personal or publicity reasons; U.S. President William McKinley did this at the public reception where he was assassinated.[49]
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, and in some cases altered to look like the target, with the body double then taking the place of the person in high risk situations. According to Joe R. Reeder, Under Secretary of the Army from 1993–97, Fidel Castro has used body doubles.[51]
United States Secret Service protective agents receive training in the psychology of assassins.[52]