MOSCOW, February 28 – RIA Novosti. Co-chairman of the opposition party RPR-Parnas, former First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Boris Nemtsov was killed in the center of Moscow on the night of February 28.
Below is background information on the murders of political and public figures in Russia in 1994-2015.
In Moscow, State Duma deputy of the fourth convocation (2003-2007) Ruslan Yamadayev was killed. His Mercedes was fired upon on Smolenskaya embankment. A criminal case has been opened regarding the murder of Ruslan Yamadayev under articles “murder” and “attempted murder”. The Moscow City Court sentenced a native of Chechnya, Aslanbek Dadaev, to 20 years in a maximum security colony, finding him guilty of the murder of Ruslan Yamadayev. The accomplice in the crime, Elimpasha Khatsuev, was sentenced to 15 years in a special regime colony. The third defendant in the case, Timur Isaev, received 14 years in a maximum security colony.
On May 9, 2004, in an explosion at the Dynamo stadium in the city of Grozny during celebrations dedicated to Victory Day, Chechen President Akhmat Kadyrov was killed. An explosive device, the power of which was about 1 kilogram of TNT, was planted under the podium for the guests of honor. On June 15, 2006, a statement by Shamil Basayev was distributed on the Internet, in which he took responsibility for the assassination attempt.
On April 17, 2003, State Duma deputy Sergei Yushenkov was shot dead near his own entrance in Moscow. In March 2004, the Moscow City Court handed down a verdict in the case of the murder of Sergei Yushenkov. Mikhail Kodanev, named as the customer and organizer of the murder, as well as the perpetrator of the crime, Alexander Kulachinsky, received 20 years in prison.
On the morning of August 21, 2002, State Duma deputy Vladimir Golovlev was killed on Pyatnitskoye Shosse 36 in the Mitino microdistrict in Moscow while walking his dog. His corpse with gunshot wounds to the head was found in the area of the forest belt of Pyatnitskoye Highway. He was buried at the Mitinskoye cemetery in Moscow three days later.
On August 7, 2002, unknown assailants shot and killed the vice-governor of Smolensk, Vladimir Prokhorov, who was leaving the house with his wife and daughter. When he left the house in the morning and walked to work, approximately 50 meters from the entrance, an unknown person opened fire on him from the bushes. The killer fired five (according to other sources - six) shots, three of them hit the target. Prokhorov died on the spot from his injuries. His wife, who was with him, was not injured. Subsequently, she said that she saw a man run out of the bushes and disappear behind nearby houses. The murder was never solved.
In the village of Pervomaiskoye, Altai Territory, former State Duma deputy Mikhail Sirota was killed. He was shot when he went outside to find out what the passengers of the white Niva, which had been parked near the gate of his house for several hours, needed. As the investigation found out, three criminals were waiting for Sirota in this car. The director was shot point-blank with three shots from a homemade revolver with a silencer. Mikhail Sirota died in the intensive care unit from wounds to the head and back, without regaining consciousness. In December 2002, the Altai Regional Court sentenced four members of the criminal group who committed the murder. According to the court verdict, the criminals were sentenced to imprisonment terms from 10 to 18 years.
On December 18, 2000, the mayor of Murom, Pyotr Kaurov, was killed.
On March 27, 2000, the Vice-Governor of Kamchatka Alexei Kotlyar was killed.
In the evening in St. Petersburg, Dmitry Varvarin, a well-known businessman and member of the political council of the Yuri Boldyrev Bloc, was shot in the head near his home. Varvarin was the president of the largest diversified concern in the region, Orimi, which was engaged, in particular, in the supply of tea and coffee, shipping, and trade in building materials. He was considered one of the richest residents of St. Petersburg and the main sponsor of the election campaign of Yuri Boldyrev, who recently announced his intention to run for the post of governor of St. Petersburg.
In St. Petersburg, a deputy of the city's Legislative Assembly, Viktor Novoselov, was killed. As it became known, at about 9:00 Moscow time on the corner of the street. Frunze and Moskovsky Prospekt, an unknown criminal threw an explosive device into the Volvo official car in which the deputy and a security guard were driving to work (according to other sources, the bomb was dropped on the roof of the car). The security guard managed to jump out of the car and open fire on the criminals, but he was wounded and ended up in the hospital. V. Novoselov died, his head was torn off.
Late in the evening, Galina Vasilievna Starovoitova, a State Duma deputy and co-chair of the Democratic Russia party, was killed at the entrance of her own house in St. Petersburg. The crime was committed around 11 p.m. Moscow time, when Starovoitova returned from Moscow along with her assistant Ruslan Linkov. Galina Starovoitova and Ruslan Linkov entered the entrance and began to climb the stairs when two people came down from above to meet them and opened fire from a machine gun at the deputy and her assistant. The criminals fired at least five shots at their victim. Three of them, fired from a machine gun, hit Galina Starovoitova in the head. Subsequently, several more shots were fired from the pistol, possibly control shots. Galina Starovoitova died on the spot. Deputy assistant Ruslan Linkov was seriously wounded in the head and neck, and was taken to the Department of Military Field Surgery of the Military Medical Academy of St. Petersburg. The shooters fled the scene.
There was an attempt on the life of businessman and politician Dmitry Filippov. At about nine o'clock in the evening, he and two bodyguards entered the entrance of his house on Tverskaya Street, 15. At that moment, an explosive device went off. In serious condition, Dmitry Filippov was taken to the Military Medical Academy. On October 14, Fillipov died.
On July 3, 1998, State Duma deputy Lev Rokhlin was found murdered at his own dacha in the village of Klokovo, Naro-Fominsk district, Moscow region. The Prosecutor General's Office accused his wife Tamara Pavlovna Rokhlina, who initially admitted to the crime. Later she changed her testimony, saying that she incriminated herself under pressure and out of fear for her family. In November 2000, the Naro-Fominsk City Court examined Rokhlina’s case, found her guilty of committing the murder of her husband due to personal hostility and sentenced her to 8 years in prison. In December 2000. The Moscow Regional Court, having considered the cassation appeal, reduced the prison term to four years. On March 1, 2001, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation issued a protest against T. Rokhlina’s sentence, pointing out violations of the law committed during the investigation, and recommended sending the case for a new trial. On March 28, 2001, the Presidium of the Moscow Regional Court upheld the conviction of Tamara Rokhlina, rejecting the protest of the Supreme Court of Russia. In May 2001, T. Rokhlina filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg with a request to find her not guilty of the murder of her husband and oblige the Russian authorities to pay her compensation for moral damage in the amount of $5 million. On June 7, the Supreme Court of Russia overturned the conviction against Tamara Rokhlina and released her from custody on her own recognizance.
In St. Petersburg, an adviser to the city governor Vladimir Yakovlev on legal issues, a member of the board of the city Lawyers Association, Igor Dubovik, was shot dead. Igor Dubovik was killed with three shots to the head near the building where his apartment is located. Next to the BMW 525, in which the lawyer’s body was found, the police found 8 spent PM cartridges.
In St. Petersburg, at the intersection of Nevsky Prospekt and Rubinshteina Street, the Chairman of the City Property Management Committee of the St. Petersburg Administration, Vice-Governor of the city Mikhail Manevich, was mortally wounded. He and his wife were in a company car and were heading to work. An unknown sniper opened fire from the attic window of house No. 76 on Nevsky Prospekt. The bullets hit Manevich (who was sitting in front) in the neck and chest, and he died on the way to the hospital.
On the night of November 26, 1995, deputy Sergei Markidonov was killed during a trip to the Chita region by his drunken bodyguard. After the murder, the guard committed suicide.
State Duma deputy from the LDPR faction Sergei Skorochkin was kidnapped in Zaraysk near Moscow and shot dead in the forest near Lukhovitsy. Six people were initially charged with his murder. On November 29, 1998, the Moscow Solbskuyu sentenced those accused of murdering Oleg Lipkin and Teimuraz Kurgin to 5.5 and 4.5 years in prison. Both were found guilty of kidnapping a deputy. However, the jury found that Lipkin and Kurgin did not kill Skorochkin. At the same time, the jury acquitted Nikolai Lopukhov, Viktor Moskalev, Sergei Zorin and Alexei Evseev, who were accused of kidnapping the deputy. They were released from custody in the courtroom. The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, to which the Moscow Regional Prosecutor's Office appealed, overturned this verdict and returned the case to the Moscow Regional Court for a new trial. In December 2000, a new acquittal was rendered. The court found Oleg Lipkin guilty only of using a false identity. The Supreme Court again overturned the verdict, upholding the prosecutor's protest. By the time of the new trial, which began in September 2002, five, not six, defendants had already appeared before the court - Teimuraz Kurgin was released from criminal liability “due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.” On May 7, 2003, the Moscow Social Court acquitted Oleg Lipkin, Nikolai Lopukhov, Viktor Moskalev, Sergei Zorin and Alexey Evseev “for lack of evidence of participation in the commission of a crime.” The case, as before, was heard by a jury. However, this time the opinion of the board was divided. Since, according to the law, “all doubts are interpreted in favor of the accused,” an acquittal was pronounced. The Moscow Regional Prosecutor's Office again appealed the court decision. On July 10, 2003, the Supreme Court overturned the acquittal for the third time and returned the case to the lower court for a new trial. In February 2005, the Moscow Regional Court
Politics is a game that is difficult to play honestly. Because you may find that out of all parties, you are the only one who follows the rules. History is full of brutal murders of the powerful, and recently there have been more and more women's names on this list.
Indira Gandhi
The twentieth century had its own three goddesses of fate, their names were Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi. Despite her surname, Indira was not related to “that same” Gandhi. She was the daughter of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and her husband was the namesake of Mahatma Gandhi and not even an Indian, but a Parsi-Zoroastrian. The Mahatma declared that there should be no division between Indians - Indira overcame the religious one to begin with. Indira was Prime Minister twice, from her forty-nine to sixty years and from sixty-three until her death, which occurred, however, only four years later. It was under Indira that India signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with the USSR. She came to power promising to fight poverty: not a single one of her compatriots should know hunger, thirst, or death from disease! However, she took strange measures to combat it. For example, hospitals sterilized women from the lower classes without telling them anything.
She survived the first assassination attempt back in 1980, only returning after the next elections to the post of prime minister. A knife was thrown at her. A security guard managed to cover Indira with his own body, and the terrorist was captured. The confrontation between the Indian government and the Sikhs was fatal for Indira. In those years, the Sikhs were much harsher than now, and organized, for example, Hindu pogroms. They also declared their disobedience to the government and declared themselves an independent, self-governing community. Five hundred people died in a major operation to bring the Sikhs into obedience. Four months later, Indira Gandhi was shot by her own guards - they were traditionally recruited from Sikhs, hereditary warriors. That day, Indira took off her bulletproof vest for the first time in many days to arrive for a television interview in a beautiful yellow sari. The bodyguards knew this, and it was impossible not to notice. Indira's ashes were scattered over the Himalayas, as she had wished. 
Benazir Bhutto
Benazir became the first Muslim ruler in modern times, or rather, the head of government. Her party won the Pakistani elections in 1988, and Benazir, as the party's leader, automatically became prime minister. Since she was only thirty-five, she also became the youngest female prime minister in history. Bhutto's husband became finance minister. Bhutto and her party successfully carried out a series of social reforms, mostly restoring what had been destroyed by the previous regime, and finally restored a bad peace with India, which was, of course, better than a good fight. Meanwhile, Bhutto’s husband found himself at the center of a scandal due to the extent of corruption he unleashed - he himself even received the nickname “Mr. Ten Percent.” The scandals reached such proportions that in 1990 the president was forced to dismiss the entire government.
Three years later, Bhutto goes to the polls under the slogan... of fighting corruption. This time her party, which has lost popularity, has to unite with another one. Having become prime minister again, Bhutto nationalizes oil production and uses the money from it for social programs. This time her reign is much more successful. Schools were opened in the villages, electricity and water were installed (in hot Pakistan there were real problems with water). Health care and education became free. Meanwhile, corruption became even more widespread, and again Bhutto's husband was involved in the scandal. Because of this, the prime minister's popularity fell seriously. Under the threat of a coup, the government was forced to recognize the Taliban, and the Taliban dismissed the government. Osama bin Laden announced a hunt for Bhutto, placing a ten million dollar reward on her head. The military government that replaced the Taliban threw Bhutto's husband into prison. Benazir herself fled abroad. In 2007, the president called her back, promising amnesty in a corruption case. The country needed Bhutto. 
In the winter of 2007, Benazir spoke at a rally in front of her allies. She had already quarreled again with the military president. The suicide bomber waited until the end of the rally - perhaps he himself was interested in listening. Then he shot Benazir in the neck and chest, and blew himself up. This was the second attempt on Bhutto's life, this time successful. About twenty people died along with Benazir. Many Pakistanis blamed the president for the murder. Anna Lind
In 1998, Anna Lindh from the Social Democratic Party was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in Sweden. Her political activities were without scandals, and therefore Lind's murder shocked the country. In the fall of 2003, Anna went to the supermarket to buy groceries. She had no security, since there were no enemies. While she was looking at the goods on the shelves, a young man approached her. He stabbed her several times and ran away.
Lind was rushed to the hospital without delay. Doctors fought for her life for several hours, but the killer caused too much damage. The next morning the minister died. Meanwhile, the killer was found and arrested. He turned out to be an ethnic Serb, a citizen of Sweden, Mihailo Mikhailovich. He told investigators that voices in his head told him to kill Lind. The court did not believe in his insanity and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Jacqueline Kreft
Grenada is a small island state in the Caribbean Sea. Jacqueline was born there into a family of African descent. In her youth she worked as a school teacher and at the same time received a bachelor's degree in political science. Politics interested her from her youth. She participated in protests against the totalitarian regime of Gairy, as a result of which she lost her right to teach. She began an affair with the leader of these actions, which developed into an unofficial marriage. Jacqueline gave birth to a son named Vladimir Lenin Maurice.
After a successful coup in 1979, Jacqueline became Minister of Education, and then, in addition, Minister of Women's Affairs. Fortunately, Jacqueline understood both the needs of schools and the needs of women - for obvious reasons. Under Kreft, many schools were built and renovated. Moreover, education itself has become quite ideological. The colonialist view was purged - for example, it was no longer possible to teach that America was “discovered”, because people already lived in it. Only the path into it could have been opened by Europeans. The number of hours devoted to English-language literature, which previously constituted almost the bulk of literature lessons, was reduced. In 1983, another coup took place, this time organized by radical communists. The head of government, Jacqueline's common-law husband, was arrested. She herself was first allowed to choose - to end contact with him or be arrested too. Kreft chose arrest. The supporter managed to free both, Kreft and her comrades tried to stage a reverse coup and were killed. According to rumors, they spared Kreft the bullets and beat her to death. After another change of power, her killers were sentenced to death, with the sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Vladimir Lenin Maurice died at sixteen in a stabbing in a Canadian nightclub. Agata Uwilingiyimana
Europeans usually have an idea of the Rwandan genocide, when tall Tutsis were killed by short Hutus. But few people know the names of the participants in the events. Uwilingiyimana, a Hutu by nationality, became prime minister, but only for eighteen days. The president dismissed her, but since there were no others, she remained as interim prime minister for another eight months, continuing to perform her duties. Hutu leaders viewed Agatha as a traitor to the interests of her people, as she believed it was important to maintain peace and balance in the country.
In April 1994, a plane carrying the President of Rwanda was shot down by missiles. Agatha became the de facto head of the country, until the expected election of the next president. The UN provided her with security from among Belgian and Ghanaian soldiers. She was also guarded by Rwandan guards. At seven in the morning, the Rwandan guards demanded that the foreigners lay down their arms, and they complied with the demands after some deliberation. Agatha and her family managed to leave the house during negotiations between Rwandan and foreign guards and take refuge at a UN volunteer base. But the Rwandans soon entered there. Agatha and her husband came out to meet them - if they had been found near the children, they would have killed the children too. They were shot on the spot. A Senegalese officer from the UN Volunteer Base, Mbaye Dianem, took care of the children. He sent them to Europe. The Belgian and Ghanaian guards were tortured and killed after they laid down their arms. In total, up to a million people died during the Rwandan massacre. The murder of a Russian citizen who sought refuge in Ukraine has led to speculation about the Kremlin's involvement.
Not everyone who quarrels with the Russian President Vladimir Putin, die under cruel or suspicious circumstances - not all. But quite a few vocal critics of Putin's policies have been killed, and the killing of a Russian citizen who sought refuge in Ukraine has led to speculation about Kremlin involvement.
David Filippov writes about this in the article “Ten Critics of Vladimir Putin Who Died Violently or Under Suspicious Circumstances,” published on the website of The Washington Post newspaper.
Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova, 2009
Markelov was a human rights lawyer known for representing Chechen civilians in human rights cases against the Russian army. He has also represented journalists embattled after writing articles critical of Putin, including Novaya Gazeta correspondent Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in 2006. Markelov was shot dead by a masked gunman near the Kremlin. Baburova, also a Novaya Gazeta journalist, was killed when she tried to help him. Russian authorities said a neo-Nazi group was behind the killings and two of its members were convicted of their murders.
Sergei Magnitsky, 2009
Lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in custody in November 2009 after he was allegedly severely beaten and then denied medical care. He worked for the British-American businessman William Browder, investigating a major tax fraud case. Magnitsky was allegedly arrested after discovering evidence that police officers were involved in the fraud. In 2012, Magnitsky was posthumously found guilty of tax evasion, and Browder lobbied the US government to impose sanctions on those involved in his death. The sanctions law is named after him, and has since been applied to rights violators in other cases.
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Natalya Estemirova, 2009
Natalya Estemirova was a journalist who investigated the kidnappings and murders that had become commonplace in Chechnya. There, pro-Russian security forces carried out a brutal crackdown to wipe out Islamic militants responsible for some of the country's worst terrorist attacks. Like journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Estemirova reported on civilians who were often caught between these two brutal sides. Estemirova was kidnapped near her home, shot several times, including at point-blank range in the head, and thrown out in the nearby forest. No one was convicted of her murder.
Photo gallery The hospital reported on the condition of the victim during the attack on Voronenkov security guard (4 photos)
Anna Politkovskaya, 2006
Anna Politkovskaya was a Russian correspondent for Novaya Gazeta, and in her book Putin's Russia she accused the Kremlin leader of turning the country into a police state. She has written extensively about abuses in Chechnya and appeared several times on radio shows in Moscow. She was shot point-blank in the elevator of her building. Five people were charged with her murder, but a judge found that it was a contract killing for which they paid $150,000 but never identified the person who ordered it. Putin denied the Kremlin's involvement in Politkovskaya's murder, saying her "death itself does more harm to the current authorities both in Russia and in Chechnya... than her activities."
AlexanderLitvinenko, 2006
Alexander Litvinenko was a former KGB agent who died three weeks after drinking a cup of tea laced with the deadly polonium-210 in a London hotel. A British investigation found that Litvinenko was poisoned by Russian agents Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, who acted on orders "likely approved by President Putin." Russia refused to extradite them, and in 2015 the Russian president presented Lugovoy with a medal for “services to the fatherland.” After leaving the FSB, Litvinenko became a vocal critic of the service led by Putin, and he later accused the security service of orchestrating a series of house bombings in Russia in 1999 that killed hundreds of people. This was followed by Russia's invasion of Chechnya that same year, and with it the rise to power of Putin. Berezovsky was suspected of being involved in at least part of the plan to bring Putin into the Kremlin, but he later tried to frame the Russian president for Litvinenko's murder. The same, in turn, accused Putin of killing Politkovskaya.
Sergey Yushenkov, 2003
The affable former army colonel was a favorite of parliamentary reporters in the early 1990s when I (Filippov - ed.) was studying trade for The Moscow Times. Sergei Yushenkov had just registered his Liberal Russia movement as a political party when he was shot dead outside his home in Moscow. He was collecting evidence that he believed indicated that Putin's government was behind one of the apartment bombings in 1999.
Yuri Shchekochikhin, 2003
Yuri Shchekochikhin, a journalist and author who wrote about crime and corruption in the former Soviet Union when it was still very difficult to do so, once joined me (Filippov - ed.) during a police raid on drug houses in Philadelphia in 1988. He was investigating the 1999 house bombings for Novaya Gazeta when he was struck down by a mysterious illness in July 2003. He died suddenly, a few days before he was due to leave for the United States. The Russian authorities declared his medical documents secret.
President of the Congo Patrice Lumumba. First Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a former colony of Belgium. Lumumba was forced to act in conditions of a severe economic and political crisis in the newly formed country. The former metropolis refused to help his government and, as a result, he decided to receive support from the USSR. Political opponents immediately accused Lumumba of intending to create a communist regime in the country. US President Dwight Eisenhower gave the order to kill Lumumba, but CIA agents did not have time to complete this task - his political opponents got to the President of the Congo earlier. Lumumba was arrested and executed (1961), despite attempts by Soviet diplomacy to save him.
President of Cuba Fidel Castro. It is believed that Castro became the record holder for survival - he survived 637 assassination attempts, many of which (from 1959 to 1962) were prepared with the participation of US intelligence services. American intelligence used the most exotic types of weapons for this: booby-trapped cigars, pens that fired poisoned bullets, booby-trapped sea shells that were scattered on Castro’s favorite beach, and even poison that was supposed to cause Castro to go bald and cause the loss of his famous beard. After the victory of the revolution in Cuba, Castro tried unsuccessfully to improve relations with the United States. However, it failed because it affected the interests of American companies operating in Cuba. In particular, the Cuban National Telephone Company (owned by the American ITT), branches of American banks (The First National Bank of Boston, First National City Bank of New York and Chase Manhattan Bank were affected) and agricultural lands belonging to the powerful United Fruit were nationalized. It is curious that the CIA's attempts to kill Castro were made even before he began collaborating with the USSR and announced that Cuba was beginning to build a socialist society.
Spiritual leader of Iran Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini became the leader of the Islamic revolution, which overthrew the pro-American regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi in 1979. Iran, which for a long time was one of the most reliable American allies in the Middle East, and quite suddenly (American intelligence did not expect that events would develop in this way) “fell out” of this rank. In other states where the majority of the population was Muslim, the success of Iranian fundamentalists led to the emergence of many imitators. After fleeing Iran, Pahlavi was allowed to come to the United States for treatment. After Iranian TV reported this, 80 Iranian students seized the US embassy in Tehran, taking 52 diplomats and their families hostage. The students demanded that the former Shah be handed over to Iran. This demand was rejected. In 1980, US special forces attempted to free the hostages. However, the helicopters carrying paratroopers were caught in a sandstorm, and three of the eight vehicles crashed in the desert. The operation was curtailed. The diplomats remained in custody until 1981. Information about the details of this operation remains classified to this day. Some researchers believe that the helicopters were actually heading not to the capital of Iran, Tehran, but to the city of Qom, where the residence of Ayatollah Khomeini was located. It is assumed (there is no reliable evidence of the validity of this version) that the operation was aimed at capturing Khomeini hostage and then exchanging him for embassy employees.
Head of the Libyan Jamahiriya Muammar Gaddafi . Gaddafi declared himself a pan-Arab leader and actively helped terrorist and extremist organizations. In 1986, Libyan intelligence services organized a bomb explosion at a discotheque in West Berlin, which was visited by American military personnel, and blew up a PanAm airliner that crashed near the Scottish village of Lockerbie (Gaddafi's guilt was not proven). As a result, the administration of Ronald Reagan, which was actively fighting international terrorism in those years, decided to “punish” and, possibly, destroy Gaddafi. First, military clashes occurred between the Libyan Navy and ships of the US Sixth Fleet. Then Gaddafi's palace was subjected to massive bombing. The Libyan leader survived because he managed to hide in his bunker, but his adopted daughter died under the bombs. Gaddafi's wife and two sons were injured. But the American and British intelligence services do not lose hope of destroying Colonel Gaddafi. At the end of the 90s. On the outskirts of London, Libyan Islamist oppositionists are based, associated with Al-Qaeda and for several years trying to kill him with the secret support of London and Washington. In retaliation, the Libyan intelligence services undertake an operation that ends in failure due to poor organization. In November 1996, London, together with its Libyan Islamist allies, organized an assassination attempt on Gaddafi. On the evening of May 31, 1998, in the city of Sidi Khalifa (Libya), Gaddafi came under bullets from shooters who opened fire on him on the highway from an ambush: like a real Bedouin who hated airplanes, he was traveling to Egypt by car. He was wounded in the elbow and three of his guards were killed. Responsibility for the assassination was claimed (through the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat) by the Islamic Martyrs' Movement, the militant wing of the Fighting Islamic Group, which unites about 400 Libyan "Afghans" and operates in the Benghazi area. In the confrontation with Gaddafi, Washington and London decided to use the Islamists in the same way as they used them against the USSR in Afghanistan. They sheltered these oppositionists in London with the support of MI5 and, no doubt, the CIA. Gaddafi reacted. After a number of attempts on the leader's life, bombs began to explode. Libyan intelligence services were blamed for these attacks. Although in some cases, such as the bombing of UTA flight DC10, which killed 54 French people, Tripoli's direct involvement in this attack has yet to be proven. Stifled by the embargo imposed after the attacks, Gaddafi's regime faces rising Islamist protests fueled by the economic and social crisis. In the 90s, a series of armed clashes took place between the colonel’s troops and Muslim oppositionists, about which the press hardly wrote. Gaddafi managed to suppress the rebellion through military and political means, and his concessions to the international community led to the easing of the embargo. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 gave him a chance to get rid of the only force that could threaten his regime: Washington did not bomb the outskirts of London, but surveillance was established over the Libyan oppositionists, and some of them were arrested and extradited to Tripoli.
“As a result of an assassination attempt organized by the CIA on the territory of a sovereign state, an outstanding patriot of his people and a hero of Yugoslavia died Zeljko Raznatovic, affectionately nicknamed Arkan by the Serbs. The murder took place on January 16, 2000, in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel in Belgrade. Milovan Mandić and Dragan Garic were killed along with him. Zeljko Ražnatović led the Tigers partisan unit, which terrified the bosses of the New World Order in Washington and their quislings and puppets. Already in 1994, Washington developed plans to assassinate political figures in Yugoslavia, in particular Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic. Recently, in connection with the criminal war of the United States and its NATO satellites against Yugoslavia, plans have been developed to assassinate Milosevic.”
The CIA was preparing assassination attempts de Gaulle, killed the Spanish Prime Minister Blanco, with the help of the “red brigades” maintained by the secret services, dealt with Aldo Moro, a supporter of the broad popular consensus in Italy. In Italy, massacres took place in banks, on railways, and during youth protests. The excesses should have prepared what was accomplished in Greece, where CIA fascist agents Colonels Papadopoulos and Pattakos came to power. A "black belt" was planned throughout the southern Mediterranean, from Salazar's Portugal and Franco's Spain to Greece, Italy and France. The NATO plan for the fascistization of the allies and the intervention of the armed forces of the United States and England is called "Stay behind" ("Stand behind"), but the Italians renamed it "Gladio", that is, a short gladiator's sword, which is convenient to stick in the stomach in close combat . Victims of the CIA can also be called Che Guevara, President of Chile Allende, Presidents of Panama Kantera And Torrijosa. President of Ecuador Aguilera, President of Bolivia Torres, Archbishop of El Salvador Romero, Cabral And Mondlane, leaders of the national liberation movement in Guinea and Mozambique, President of Iraq Kasema, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Bandaranaike, President of Bangladesh Rahman, President of the Philippines Magsaysay, puppet Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam (when tired), dictator of the Dominican Republic Trujillo. They participated in the overthrow of the Indonesian President Sukarno, assassination attempt Indira Gandhi.
An example of the “double” construction of assassination attempts with the accusation of the “Reds” is the organization of shots at the Pope John Paul II, produced by the Turkish fascist and terrorist Agca. US agents in Ankara helped him escape from a Turkish prison, and American and British masters of falsification helped him organize a provocation with a mock trial of the Bulgarian citizen Antonov. Suffice it to say that Agca, who was promised imminent release by his masters, after a number of years of fruitless waiting, told reporters that there was no trace of any “Bulgarian trace” in the assassination attempt.
Another example of a conspiracy was the activities of American counterintelligence agent Licho Gelli, who headed the P-2 Masonic lodge, which was banned after a parliamentary investigation. She has a fair share of explosions, murders, and assassinations to her name, with which they wanted to destabilize Italy in order to put into effect the Gladio plan and carry out a coup d’etat in the country, which Gelli called the “plan for democratic revival.” The plan provided for the arrest of left-wing functionaries and trade union leaders and the actual liquidation of parliament.
The participation of the US intelligence services in this terrorist activity was so great that it caused protests from the head of the CIA, Turner, and President Reagan was forced to legislatively limit dangerous experiments on humans conducted by CIA laboratories and regulate the practice of murder. This is what Reagan's clause 2.11 says: "No Assassination. No person in the employ of or on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in murder or conspire to commit murder." (The practice of murder has been unhindered since 1953. At the same time, according to the head of the Turner Center for Research and Development Center, a program was implemented that included “ultra brain control” - “mind control ultra.” It also extended to the Soviet Union). (18, 27, 100)
WHO IS NOT CLEAR?
US President Dwight Eisenhower personally ordered the assassination of the first prime minister of independent Congo Patrice Lumumba. This is evidenced by recently declassified archival materials. The legendary leader of the anti-colonial struggle in Africa in the 60s was widely known in the Soviet Union, and the capital's Peoples' Friendship University still bears his name. We are talking about the events that occurred on August 18, 1960 and were reflected in one of the transcripts of a meeting of the US National Security Council. Until recently, this document was classified as “top secret”. According to meeting stenographer Robert Johnson, after discussing the situation in the Congo, Eisenhower turned to then-CIA Director Allen Dulles and told him that Lumumba must be eliminated. "I can't exactly reproduce Eisenhower's words as they came to me, but it was something like an order to kill Lumumba.", Johnson would later say in Congress. After this there was a pause that lasted approximately 15 seconds. The cabinet members then returned to the discussion. Arriving at the White House, Eisenhower instituted a strict rule: statements by participants in internal meetings were given only in exposition - no direct quotes. That is why Johnson could not reproduce verbatim the entire phrase uttered by the president, but a former White House staffer claims that its meaning leaves no doubt. Johnson repeated all this on June 10, 1975, during closed hearings in the Select Senate Intelligence Committee, which were devoted to the topic of US participation in operations to eliminate the leaders of foreign countries. True, a week later, on June 18, during similar hearings, he reproduced the events in a more cautious form. However, the committee, then headed by Democrat Frank Church, was forced to admit that Johnson's testimony gave reason to believe that Eisenhower gave such an order, although there is no absolute evidence on this matter. The CIA took the president’s words exactly as the stenographer Johnson understood them, and in September 1960 sent its “specialist” to the Congo for special assignments, who was supposed to add poison to Lumumba’s food. “At the highest level, they have come to the unequivocal conclusion that if Lumumba holds his post, the inevitable consequence will be, at best, chaos, and at worst, a seizure of power by the Communists,” CIA chief Dulles wrote in a coded message to his resident in the Congo. “His elimination must be an urgent priority". However, the prepared poison did not have to be used. The CIA agents were ahead of Lumumba's Congolese opponents who staged the coup. They brutally dealt with the prime minister on January 17, 1961. Lumumba was shot, his body dismembered and dissolved in sulfuric acid. Church's Senate Committee would later announce that the data at its disposal did not support any US involvement in the removal of the African leader. Reports recently emerged that the intelligence services of Belgium, a country that once exercised a colonial protectorate over the Congo, were involved in the killing. As for Washington’s role, historians admit that it is no longer possible to fully clarify it. This is mainly due to the fact that some of the documents in this case disappeared without a trace. And yet, at a minimum, declassified materials show that the American leadership did not hesitate to give the go-ahead to eliminate the leaders of sovereign states when their policies did not suit Washington.
Ceausescu was overthrown by the CIA with the support of Gorbachev
Now this threatens Belarus and Lukashenko - from Washington and Putin’s special services?
The fact that Ceausescu was overthrown by the CIA was proven by the authors of a German documentary filmed on the 15th anniversary of the events.
The film "The Execution of Ceausescu", directed by Susanne Brandstater, recently shown on the French-German television channel Arte, claims that the CIA organized both the overthrow and the murder in 1989 of Nicolae Ceausescu.
15 years ago, the execution of the former general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party and his wife Elena was presented as an expression of the will of the people who had overthrown the hated communist regime. The workers of Romania, for whom his grave today has become a place of worship, and generally sensible people all over the world did not believe this even then.
For many years, Ceausescu was quite happy with Washington. After all, he looked like a real schismatic in the socialist camp: he did not support the entry of USSR troops into Afghanistan and the boycott of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, and insisted on the simultaneous disbandment of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. But by the end of the 80s it became clear that he would not follow the path of traitors to socialism like Gorbachev. Moreover, this was hampered by increasingly loud revelations of opportunism and betrayal of communism coming from Bucharest. And in Langley they made a decision: Ceausescu needed to be removed (of course, then this could not be done without the consent of Moscow...).
The operation was entrusted to the head of the CIA's Eastern European department, Milton Borden. In the film, he admits that the action to overthrow the socialist regime and eliminate Ceausescu was sanctioned by the US government. First, they “processed” world public opinion. Through agents, negative materials about the dictator and interviews with Romanian dissidents who fled abroad were released to the Western media. The leitmotif of these publications was this: Ceausescu tortures the people, steals public money, and does not develop the economy. The information in the West went off with a bang.
At the same time, “PR” began for the most likely successor to Ceausescu, for whose role Ion Iliescu was chosen. This candidacy ultimately satisfied both Washington and Moscow. And through Hungary, which had already “cleansed” itself of socialism, weapons were quietly supplied to the Romanian opposition. And finally, simultaneously, several world television channels broadcast a story about the murders of civilians in the city of Timisoara, the “capital” of the Romanian Hungarians, by agents of the secret Romanian intelligence service “Securitate”. Now, in the film “The Execution of Ceausescu,” the CIA officials admit that it was a brilliant montage. All those who died actually died a natural death. And the corpses were specially delivered to the filming site from local morgues, fortunately, it was not difficult to bribe the orderlies.
Apparently, the CIA (and perhaps now its branch - some “Russian” intelligence services) has quite a few similar “scenarios” in store in its arsenals. And next time they can work in Belarus, and in Ukraine, and, perhaps, under certain circumstances, even in Russia...
Washington Post and Yemen Killings - "Liberal" Press Celebrates CIA's "Murder, Inc."
Bill VannNovember 13, 2002
This article was published on the WSWS English page on November 9, 2002.
The November 3 killing of 6 people in Yemen by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was praised by most of the American media. Almost all the media called the salvo of a missile fired by an unmanned Predator aircraft “retribution” for anti-American terrorism. One of the most significant comments was an editorial that the Washington Post published on November 6 in response to criticism of the operation in the Arab world and other parts of the world.
Bush administration officials described Sunday's missile attack in Yemen on a vehicle carrying six al-Qaeda members as a military operation on a counterterrorism battlefield, even though it took place far from Afghanistan in a country where there is no military presence. conflict in the normal sense of the word," the editorial begins. "Other observers have called it a targeted or even extrajudicial killing, although such phrases usually refer to violations of human rights or international law. This is a wrongful conviction."
The Washington Post's blunt statement strips the paper of any claims it still retains to defending basic democratic and human rights and places it among the undisputed supporters of the imperialist war and neocolonial conquests of the Bush administration. This stunning self-exposure highlights the degradation of American liberalism.
Why is it unacceptable to condemn the murder of six people by the Central Intelligence Agency? The Washington Post claims that the victims of this assassination "were not political figures or criminals, but were trained members of an organization that had declared war on the United States."
The newspaper does not attempt to support its view by citing international treaties or human rights agreements that would allow the forces of one country to covertly enter the territory of another state and kill its citizens in the absence of war between both countries. This is understandable - after all, such documents do not exist.
On the contrary, there is unequivocal and internationally recognized legislation from the point of view of which these actions by the CIA constitute a war crime. If Washington carried out the attack without Yemen's permission—and the Yemeni regime remains silent on the matter—then it was an unauthorized use of force and a violation of Yemen's sovereignty. If the Yemeni government cooperated in the operation, then both governments are guilty of carrying out the death penalty without trial, a killing prohibited by human rights treaties.
The Washington Post does not consider it necessary to provide any facts to support its position. She simply quotes unnamed US government sources making statements after the CIA has already served as judge, jury and executioner. World public opinion is being asked to accept on faith American claims that those killed were in fact guilty of what they were accused of.
Among those killed, only one was named - Qaed Sinan Harithi. US sources say he was a "suspect" in connection with the 2000 attack on the US Navy destroyer Cole, which killed 17 US sailors.
One of those killed in Yemen was a US citizen, according to media reports. Thus, the American government, with the support of the so-called liberal press, arrogates to itself the right to kill its own citizens. To do this, you only need to declare the selected victim a terrorist.
Why should the public be convinced that these people deserved to die? Because the executioner says so. If the same method is applied in the USA, then neither courts and judges, nor jurors, prosecutors and lawyers will be needed. The police will simply identify those who are "suspected" of committing the crime and send a team of assassins to kill the suspects.
It is also important what words the authors of the Washington Post editorial use. Since the six people mentioned were “combatants,” killing them is not a crime. “Enemy combatant” is the definition coined by the Bush administration's Justice Department to describe US citizens designated as terrorists based on the president's unquestioned judgment. And if they were called that, then their cases do not need to be heard in court and they are not entitled to the assistance of a lawyer. Such citizens can be kept in solitary confinement indefinitely without the slightest evidence of their guilt being presented.
The same political interests and dictatorial methods that led to the violation of democratic rights in the United States, on the world stage, allowed the CIA to freely return to the methods of “Murder, Inc.”
The Bush government makes no attempt to hide its responsibility for these killings. On the eve of the midterm congressional elections [November 5], White House officials openly boasted that the operation was carried out in accordance with an executive order Bush issued last year loosening restrictions on the CIA's involvement in assassinations. There is no doubt that by reporting this bloodshed, the administration hoped to motivate the right-wing electorate of the Republican Party to take active action.
However, journalists have a professional duty to remain skeptical and demand evidence rather than advocate government-sponsored assassinations and covert operations. The Washington Post - like the media in general - has abandoned this role and is increasingly turning into a semi-official propaganda tool for American imperialism.
For a quarter of a century, the official policy of the US government was to prohibit its intelligence agency from participating in such assassinations. The executive order prohibiting such actions followed the sensational revelations in 1975 of CIA plots to assassinate foreign leaders ranging from Fidel Castro in Cuba to Congolese independence activist Patrice Lumumba and Chilean President Salvador Allende.
The reason for the official ban on assassinations organized by the CIA was concern for the US's own interests. The most astute members of the American establishment recognized that the murder was an act of terrorism, discrediting Washington in the eyes of the whole world. At the same time, they clearly understood that such actions gave legitimacy to terrorist acts directed against the United States.
The Washington Post glosses over these concerns and claims that the attack on suspected al-Qaeda members in Yemen is the only one of its kind. According to the newspaper, the presence of these people in Yemen made their capture completely impossible.
But this isn't the first time the CIA has used missile-armed drones to kill - and it probably won't be the last. The new assassination policy has a much broader scope than the Washington Post is willing to admit.
In Afghanistan, similar technical devices were used during an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Taliban leader Mullah Omar, as well as Gulbetdin Hekmatyar, the former prime minister of Afghanistan and head of the Islamic fundamentalist party Hezb-Islami. Neither is directly linked to 9/11 or any other terrorist attack against the United States. Moreover, both have been heavily involved in deals with Washington in the past. In both attacks, only innocent people who happened to be nearby were killed.
In another case, the US reported that it was able to track down a group of "terrorists" and destroy them using a Hellfire missile fired by one of the CIA's unmanned aircraft. However, it later became known that the dead were poor Afghan peasants trying to earn extra money by collecting scrap metal.
Not only the CIA, but also the Pentagon has unmanned aircraft with missiles. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has already announced that he intends to conduct his own death squad operations.
The main concern of Washington Post commentators is that other countries will not use American actions to justify their killings. “If the United States can fire a missile at one of the leaders of al-Qaeda in Yemen, then the question arises: should Israel fire the same missile at Yasser Arafat in Ramallah, and Russia at the Chechen leaders who have emigrated to Turkey or Azerbaijan?” The newspaper meekly reproaches the Bush administration for failing to explain the "fundamental" difference between a murder approved in Washington and an identical murder committed by someone else. However, the Washington Post itself makes no attempt to correct such an unacceptable oversight.
In fact, the attack in Yemen once again confirms American support for the policy of targeted killings pursued by the Israeli regime, which has already killed dozens of Palestinian leaders, along with their families and civilians who happened to be hit by rockets. If we talk about Russia, the United States gave tacit consent to the recent operation in Moscow, during which special forces killed in cold blood a group of Chechen hostage takers, although they were under the influence of drugs and were completely defenseless.
The Washington Post's sophistical exercises cannot hide the fact that the newspaper supports Washington's right to do anything, anywhere. International law is valid only in relation to less significant countries, but cannot in any way bind the “sole superpower” on our planet.
Calling the killings in Yemen "a bull's eye," the Washington Post concludes: "Sunday's successful operation, which appears to have killed a top al-Qaeda figure without killing any innocent people, should be commended." .
As we see, the editors of one of the most influential newspapers in the United States are adopting not only the worldview, but also the language of hired killers. Such journalistic burps are typical of a misled ruling elite that has embarked on a path of international crime that is fraught with serious danger for the American people and for the entire world.
The policy of state killings can lead to terrible disasters. Israel's use of these methods against Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has triggered a wave of suicide bombings that have claimed hundreds of lives. Will the use of American Hellfire missiles lead to different results?
Unmanned aircraft allow CIA assassins to kill people hundreds of miles away with the touch of a computer key without fear of retaliation. However, it is innocent American civilians who will most likely pay for these reckless and criminal policies. They will be the targets of angry and misguided people who will be recruited to carry out terrorist attacks in order to avenge the murders committed by Washington.
CONSPIRACY AGAINST PEOPLES AND LIBERATION MOVEMENTS
(Leon HERNANDEZ)Under the pretext of “fighting terrorism,” the United States and its allies organized and are organizing provocations and aggressions against sovereign states and peoples fighting against imperialism, the murder of country leaders and revolutionary liberation movements. There are countless examples of these actions in all regions of the world, organized by the West with money from the International Monetary Fund and other financial structures of imperialism.
Under the pretext of “fighting state terrorism,” the United States and its puppets are subjecting many countries that do not submit to the neocolonial dictates of the West to a trade and economic blockade. Cuba and North Korea, Iran and Iraq, Libya and Syria, Sudan and Somalia are now subject to all sorts of sanctions on behalf of the UN and NATO; a powerful propaganda campaign has been launched against these states, falsifying the reasons for their confrontation with the US and NATO.
Any country that opposes imperialist expansion and stands in solidarity with the liberation struggle of other peoples and organizations is now included by the “powers that be” on the list of “countries that support terrorism.” Russia is also involved in this adventurous campaign and policy, whose president participated in the conference of heads of state of 12 countries in Sharm el-Sheikh (Egypt) held on March 12-13, dedicated to the “global fight against terrorism.”
Who and why is considered a “terrorist” was told by the faithful guardian of “world democracy” newspaper “Segodnya” (March 13, 1996, p. 8). She almost completely published the US State Department report “On International Terrorism at the End of the 20th Century” and the accompanying map “The Geography of Terror.” According to these documents, reproduced in Segodnya, almost all revolutionary liberation organizations and even religious and political associations are terrorist! Among the “terrorists” is the National Liberation Front. F. Marti in El Salvador and the Northern Irish liberation organizations, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Guatemala and the revolutionary liberation organization of Peru "Shining Path" ("Sendero Luminoso"), the Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine and the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria, revolutionary anti-imperialist organizations in Greece and Germany , Japan and France, etc.
All “democratic” countries must fight against these movements, judging by the publication of Segodnya. Moreover, the accompanying map directly indicates countries that support terrorism: Libya, Sudan, Syria, Iran. So far only these...
It seems that, judging by the US State Department report reprinted in Today, as soon as any country or organization enters the struggle against imperialism and colonialism, on the path of revolutionary struggle against the “local” puppets of imperialism, it (the country or organization) immediately declared “terrorist”, against which a “worldwide quarantine” should be declared. When there are not enough arguments, one has to use the pose of a “fighter against terrorism” in order to maintain and strengthen imperialist domination in countries and regions of the world. This is exactly what the United States and its former and new allies are doing.
Previously, American aggressions were somewhere officially called by Washington “the fight against the expansion of communism,” but today they are the “fight against terrorism.” Suffice it to say that between 1945 and 1995, US and NATO troops waged aggressive wars and committed provocations against 35 countries in more than 40 cases. The West's "companions" in these actions were the bloody fascist dictators - Tshombe and Somoza, Duvalier and Trujillo, Batista and Duarte, Armas and Forster, Syng Man Lee and Chung Doo Hwan, Evren and Stroessner, Gairy and Salazar, Lon Nol and Thieu, Zoitakis and many other “fighters against terrorism in the name of democracy.”
The territory of NATO countries has turned into a springboard for the training of terrorists and sabotage against independent states and revolutionary liberation movements. It is NATO that has developed and is developing plans for all kinds of provocations and aggressions in various regions and countries of the world, including against Cuba and China, North Korea and Iraq, Libya and Iran, Syria and Sudan, Yugoslavia and Russia. These and similar facts are constantly reported in the press of many countries.
So who is the terrorist and supporter of state terrorism?
The global provocation of the West against sovereign states fighting against the imperialism of peoples and revolutionary liberation organizations under the false slogan of “fighting terrorism” threatens the vital interests of all countries, including Russia and other republics of the USSR, destroyed by the imperialists and their agents!
Ananda Marga
The founder of the cult is Ananda Murthy (Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar), born in 1921 in an Indian village in the state of Bihar
Doctrine: The teachings of the cult are a motley mixture of yoga with its meditation practices, the Shaivite branch of Hinduism with an emphasis on the punitive functions of the formidable god Shiva and tantrism. Sarkar has repeatedly stated that Shiva and Krishna allegedly appeared to him, who endowed him with healing abilities and supernatural powers.
The name translates as "the path to bliss." At first, Sarkar called his cult the “Moralist Society.”
Sarkar began preaching at the age of 30, speaking out against “selfishness, exploitation and corruption, for morality, order and honesty.” Sarkar founded his sect of “moralists” in 1955.
In 1967, “moralists” began to participate in nominating candidates for participation in political life, but to no avail, then Sarkar changed tactics and began to recruit government officials into his ranks. In 1970, a power struggle ensued within the leadership of the sect. Sarkar replaced his secretary.
Later, the bodies of six former Sarkar followers were found in the jungle, hacked into pieces. The guru's former assistant identified the dead and said that he himself was sentenced to death by Sarkar. A trial took place in this case and in 1971 Sarkar was sentenced to 5 years in prison on charges of murdering six former co-religionists. At the trial, witnesses stated that the “preacher of morality” participated in orgies, drinking parties and other completely unmoral acts.
In 1972, Ananda Marga was outlawed in India due to the physical destruction of its former adherents and involvement in the murder of a number of political leaders; At the same time, according to the Indian press, Indian intelligence services had information about the ties of the sect’s leadership with the US CIA and the receipt of significant financial assistance from the US intelligence services.
Since 1973, the teachings of the “moralists” began to spread in Europe, and then in the USA and other continents. Followers of Ananda Marga from all over the world began to come to the center of the sect, located in the suburbs of Calcutta, every day. There they chanted simple mantras, contemplated convulsive dances with a skull in one hand and a dagger in the other and, if possible, their guru and god Sarkar, a short bald man in glasses and white clothes.
"Ananda Marga" is based on fanatical discipline and unquestioning obedience to the leader. To be accepted into the ruling elite of this sect, a novice must perform a magical ritual, sitting on a human corpse and holding a skull in his hand, which is quite in the traditions of tantric sects.
Usually such ceremonies are held at night at burial sites. The organization of the sect is divided into two categories: adherents and initiates, who later change their name and become monks. Monks who completely subordinate their lives to the sect actively recruit new followers, organize yoga courses and lectures about it, and teach “true feelings” and meditation techniques. Young people who fall for the exotic end up in special camps scattered in different places in Europe, Asia and America. Every minute is planned in them: music and dancing alternate with reports, bodily exercises with meditation. Adepts hardly sleep. When they ask monks about problems that concern them, they are advised to meditate more.
In 1974, Indira Gandhi confirmed the ban on this sect to operate in India.
It is known that already in the mid-70s, 18 former adherents of the Ananda Marga sect were killed, who wanted to break with it on the orders of the cult leader Sarkar. On August 2, 1978, Sarkar was released from prison, where he was imprisoned on charges of instigating the murder. And on October 2, 1978, a follower of Ananda Marga, a medical student from Sydney, Lynette Phillips, self-immolated in front of the UN office in Geneva (doused herself with gasoline). Her last words before the act of self-immolation were: “I have a fiery desire to fight against the luxury and selfishness of this world.”
The suicides of the sect's adherents did not end there. Young Germans Erica Ruppert, 24, and Helmut Kleinknecht, 28, after traveling to India and the United States, where they studied the practices of the sect and tried to preach its ideas, doused themselves with gasoline and set themselves on fire in front of a Berlin church. In a farewell letter-leaflet, they wrote that they did it “out of love for all humanity.”
Secret war of economic saboteurs
02 September 2005This book is like a clap of thunder: John Perkins (John Perkins), scion of a prominent establishment family on the East Coast of the United States, in the recently released Confessions of an Economic Saboteur (Confessions of an Economic Hit Man) leaked the secrets of the “toolkit” of the international financial oligarchy. In particular, he spoke about how the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and private financiers keep developing countries in check using a whole arsenal of economic blackmail, contract killings and wars.
At the same time, a whole series of mysterious murders in Europe fits well into the technologies he talks about: from Enrico Mattei, Aldo Moro, Jurgen Ponto and Alfred Herrhausen to Detlev Carsten Rohwedder - this is just what comes to mind immediately. The sensation is that Perkins explains his decision to publicly admit that he is one of the "economic saboteurs" because he came to the conclusion that actions of this kind over decades led to the denouement of September 11, 2001. He openly warns that this will not be the end of the matter.
The appearance of this book is an echo of an unprecedented “rebellion” in the scope of a significant part of the American intelligence services, military, diplomats, and simply officials, who are increasingly convinced that the continuation of the Bush-Cheney policy will lead to the collapse of the United States. The two most important areas where the complete wretchedness of the Bush administration's policies were clearly demonstrated were the consequences of the war in Iraq, where control of the situation was lost, and, even more seriously, the reality of a global financial system based on the dollar, which was about to burst with terrible force. .
Panic is spreading: Heinz Brestel predicts in the economics section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper that the dollar will fall against the euro to 1.60; Lord William Rees-Mogg writes in the London Times that the “avalanche” (of the falling dollar) could start at any moment. Italian banker and former Italian government minister Paolo Savona warns of a “Hiroshima” threatening the financial system, and Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley investment bank, believes the world is on the verge of financial Armageddon.
The unexpected wealth of metaphors for describing the cataclysm does not at all indicate the awakening of the poetic gift of the authors - it is the scales falling from the eyes of the seemingly most unshakable supporters of globalization. The system has completely outlived its usefulness before our eyes.
Signs of a storm
The dollar is falling and falling, the capital inflow needed to contain the collapse caused by US balance sheet deficits is simply not there anymore, the price of oil has again settled at $50 per barrel - twice as expensive as what would be tolerable for the economy, taking into account global inflation. Gold has crossed $450 per ounce, mega-speculators have now switched to commodities, and Russia has already begun to reorient its assets and get rid of former dollar reserves. Other Asian countries will follow. You just have to be aware of the synchronicity of these processes to understand that everything is falling apart. And everyone who knows about this due to their official position is alarmed: a very small push is needed, just one more, and the system will collapse.
Perkins in his book emphasizes that the policies pursued by “economic saboteurs” led to the terrorist attacks of September 11. He states this without further explanation and without reference to the analysis of Lyndon LaRouche, who claims that these terrorist attacks were possible with the active assistance of certain forces in the American intelligence services, and were carried out entirely in the spirit of Goebbels' Reichstag fire.
Today's systemic crisis, however, is the result of a policy in which third world countries, one after another, become victims of economic saboteurs, first entangling governments in networks of unsustainable debt for the purpose of creating an Anglo-American empire, in the tradition of Venetian and Anglo-Dutch imperialism and to please the financial interests of firms such as Bechtel and Halliburton, and as a result end up in direct slavery to the IMF.
This policy has led to disaster for confused and confused countries, the most obvious example being Argentina and Poland, the most “obedient students” of the IMF.
Political leaders of developing countries were faced with a choice - to become lackeys of the Anglo-American empire, and act to the detriment of their people, or sooner or later be overthrown. This policy has made the world economy dependent on the self-interest of a handful of speculators.
Perkins' book had such an impact because it was written by a high-ranking insider who repented of what he said. But in essence, this is just a story about the extremely specific experience of our development over the past thirty years. Experienced experts from the LaRouche movement in the US and Europe are now comparing the facts cited by Perkins with the conditions and facts known to us, and also digging deeper. And we can already say: there are people, and primarily in developing countries, a lot of people who can confirm what Perkins is talking about.
For example, an American representative once came to Indira Gandhi and informed her that 70 (!) American businessmen, with a portfolio of investment proposals worth $30 billion, were ready to come to New Delhi if she agreed in the next few hours to an IMF loan in the amount of 30 billion dollars.
Gandhi received this representative the next day in her office in Parliament and rejected the offer, saying that only recently, with great difficulty, she had managed to repay a loan of two billion, and she saw no way to allow this “business” into the country. A Hindu who was present commented on it all like this: “She paid for her refusal with her life.”
But those who think that there is “nothing special” about killing Third World leaders should wake up quickly. Because the same policies that, according to Perkins, resulted in the debt burden of developing countries and the murders of Omar Torrijos in Panama and Jaime Roldos in Ecuador, as well as, according to our information, the murders of Salvador Allende in Chile, Ali Bhutto in Pakistan, and many others, - all this together led to an economic catastrophe in Germany and throughout Europe, and also to the fact that under such circumstances our youth, as well as the youth of America, will be “people without a future” if the financial oligarchy cannot be defeated. In other words, economic saboteurs are targeting us too.
Murder of Alfred Herrhausen
The starting point of the crisis of the German economy in the West and East, unfolding over the past 15 years, can be considered two political murders with economic background - the murder of Alfred Herrhausen on November 30, 1989 and Detlev Rohwedder in April 1991.
Just as John Perkins does today, in the 1990s former senior Pentagon official Fletcher Prouty said in an interview with Italy's Unita that Herrhausen, John Kennedy, Aldo Moro, Enrico Mattei and Olof Palme were killed because they refused, one for others, to become petty servants of the ruling “world order”.
In another statement, Prouty compared Herrhausen's assassination to that of John F. Kennedy: "His death at that precise moment... the astonishing circumstances of his death... are reminiscent of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963." ... If we reflect on the meaning of events in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and in Germany itself, the murder of Herrhausen takes on monstrous contours. We must not allow this consideration to pass by in silence."
Real terrorists don't kill bank presidents without a specific reason. Most terrorists are paid agents and tools of large centers of power. Some center needed, for some reason, that the leading person of Deutsche Bank be liquidated on this very day, and precisely in connection with (certain) circumstances - in order to teach a lesson to others. So there is a message in organizing and executing a murder.
Prouty said the key to explaining what happened was an 11-page speech Herrhausen was scheduled to give a week later, on December 4, 1989, in New York, to the American Council on Germany. This speech was never made. In it, he was going to set out his vision of a new structure of relations between East and West, which would send the whole of history after 1989 in a completely different direction. At that time, Herrhausen was the only banker whose proposals for the development of Poland in accordance with the model developed [in the 1950s] by the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (German Development Bank), as a model for other Warsaw Pact countries, coincided with the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche.
Let us recall the tragic events of the autumn of 1989: on November 9, the Berlin Wall fell, in documents made public later, the federal government admitted that it had absolutely no plans in the event of an unexpected unification of the Germans. On November 28, Helmut Kohl took the only independent step during his entire stay in power. He proposed a 10-point program for the creation of a confederation of two German states without discussing the issue with the Allied powers or even with his coalition partners, the Free Democratic Party. Two days later, on November 30, Herrhausen was killed by the so-called third generation of the RAF (Rothe-Arme Fraction - “Red Army Faction”). The ARD TV channel spoke about the existence of the RAF as follows: “ghosts.” These ghosts appeared again during the murder of Rowedder, after which they disappeared into thin air.
At the same time, Lyndon Larouche and his organization proposed a similar, but more radical program - the creation of a “production triangle Paris-Berlin-Vienna”, which could become the engine for large-scale development of the infrastructure and economy of the East.
In those days, the largest industrialists said: “We need a state, a program of this scale can only be guaranteed by the government!” If the program had been adopted, and the “fateful moment for humanity” - the unification of Germany - had been used, the East would have truly been “built”, and today we would have seen a “flourishing landscape”, and relations between East and West would have been built for the first time in history from the true perspective of the world.
As is well known, everything turned out differently. The murder of Herrhausen, the only representative of the establishment who dared to speak out with his point of view on the historical situation, was, in fact, a sign for the government and industrialists, as Colonel Prouty spoke about. After that, no one dared to stick their head out. Economic executioners came after the murderers, for example, in the person of Jeffrey Sachs and other “economists,” and began a plan for the economic dismantling of the East in the interests of speculators from the ranks of the financial oligarchy.
In December 1989, Chancellor Kohl experienced "the darkest hours of his life" at the European Union summit in Strasbourg - by which he meant that he had to submit to the dictates of the financial oligarchy in the form of the European Monetary Union.
The Maastricht Treaty, the Stability Pact, the euro instead of the mark and the economic degradation that followed were consequences.
Detlef Rohwedder
Among the industrialists there was another person with a promising vision for the development of Germany - Detlef Rohwedder. He headed the Treuhand (Treuhand - Property Management Office), and was responsible for the transformation of public enterprises in East Germany. In 1990-1991 he came to the conviction that the thoughtless privatization of enterprises in the real economy that the country needed would have completely unacceptable social consequences.
Therefore, at the beginning of 1991, he was determined to change the Treuhand concept to "first rehabilitate, then privatize", with social consequences in mind. And at that moment the ghosts of the RAF struck.
Birgit Breuel, the daughter of a banker from Hamburg, who replaced Rohwedder, had no doubts: under her leadership, privatization took place in the most severe form.
Why were these two people killed? Were they really symbols of the “fascist capitalism” that the RAF spoke of in the statement in which the organization claimed responsibility for the murder of Herrhausen? On the contrary, both of them are guilty of the cardinal sin of speaking out against the financial oligarchy by declaring their fears about the consequences of their policies. For example, in his book “Alfred Herrhausen - Political Power and Morality,” Dieter Balkhausen writes how already in 1987, at the funeral of board member Werner Blessing, Herrhausen said that one can no longer remain silent about the debt crisis in third world countries . A conversation with Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid about the debt crisis affecting developing countries had a strong impact on him, and he began to think about partially writing off these debts.
Balkhausen further writes that during the Evangelical Church conference, a discussion arose as to why international banks had allowed an astronomical amount of $1.2 trillion in loans to be provided to underdeveloped and underdeveloped countries before 1987, while in other cases credit lines were closed with "unprecedented rigidity,” and the homes of the poorest segments of the population were put up for auction.
Perkins's revelation that economic saboteurs were tasked with seducing developing countries into debt so that they could later be exploited even more ruthlessly provides an answer to this question.
In a television broadcast on the Arte channel on November 18, 2002, a Catholic priest who was a friend of Herrhausen said that he had come to the conclusion that an economic system in which a few make excessive profits and which eats up many others could not last long.
Herrhausen had the idea that he was defending something that should not have been defended, that he himself did not want to defend, and that he had no moral right to do. With such sentiments in the eyes of the financial oligarchy, he made a mistake that cost him his life: he came to the conviction that economics should be moral and humane.
I well remember a dinner conversation sometime in the 1980s with a private banker who was interested in my husband's analysis and invited him to lecture to important people. When we came to the point that man as a cognizing being should be at the center of economic policy, and the morality of the economic system should be built on this basis, the banker’s eyes widened. After this conversation, our contacts ceased. Morality in economics? No, “unprecedented cruelty” in making a profit in a free market, and even if it destroys entire continents, well, there, let’s say, a wife can support humanitarian organizations - hide behind a fig leaf.
As former Deutsche Bank CEO Rolf Breuer recalls, when Herrhausen proposed radical structural changes to the bank's board of directors on November 28, 1989, reflecting his views on the emerging market debt crisis, he encountered stiff resistance.
Mrs. Herrhausen recalled that her husband came from a meeting at the bank “deeply depressed”; it turned out that this was the last meeting he attended. And on the morning before his death, Herrhausen said to his wife: “I don’t know, maybe this is my death.”
In addition to Perkins’ book, there is another, no less compelling reason to return to the circumstances of Herrhausen’s murder. Today we are witnessing the rapid collapse of the global financial system. In this situation, Herrhausen proposed and took some measures to protect the people and the general welfare. After his murder, as well as the murder of Rohwedder, there were very few bankers, if any, left in Germany who would be prepared to act in the same direction, and this, no doubt, was the intent of the killers.
But how can this all end? Our nation may disappear. And not only ours. The rapidly worsening strategic crisis (which is associated with the events of September 11, as Perkins correctly writes) and the collapse of the financial system, which is leading to globalization and attempts to build a pax universalis (universal peace) according to the Venetian model, cry out for the need for a radical renewal of course.
A new investigation into the murders of Herrhausen and Rohwedder will show that the railroad switch was moved incorrectly. It will also tell you the direction in which to move.
The article was published in the December 10, 2004 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Politicians are people whose lives are not only visible, but not everyone is happy with them due to certain decisions and actions. That is why the world is periodically shaken by sensational news about the death or tragic death of a prominent political figure. And immediately a lot of guesses and assumptions begin to be made, many versions are put forward about who, how and why. And the names of famous personalities who have already passed away are remembered by descendants for decades.
November 22, 1963 - assassination of US President John F. Kennedy.
On the eve, John Kennedy was warned that Dallas was not too happy with his actions as president, and therefore it was better to refrain from a dangerous trip in a convertible. Oswald, who was arrested, was killed while being transported from prison to prison, and the reasons that prompted him to do this act remained unclear. Moreover, doubts arose that it was this man who fired the fatal shots at the president.
Although his death had virtually no impact on the country's political course (his successor Lyndon Johnson continued many of his programs and strategies), it is difficult to deny the degree of influence that Kennedy's untimely death had on the entire American people. Moreover, his death gave rise to a whole body of conspiracy theories, much of which contributed to the spread of paranoia and cynicism that is still alive in this country.
October 9, 1934 - assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia.
Bulgarian terrorist Vlado Chernozemsky ran up to the car in which the King of Yugoslavia, French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou, and other officials were, and managed to shoot six people. The murder, according to the most common version, was carried out by Ustasha nationalists - members of the rebel Croatian organization who advocated the separation of Croatia from Yugoslavia. The death of the king strained Yugoslavia's relations with a number of European countries - Italy, Hungary, France, which in some way could have been involved in the assassination attempt. But the Ustasha's goal was achieved only 57 years later.
October 31, 1984 - assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Two security officers shot the Prime Minister with a pistol and a machine gun when she, having gone to a television interview, had barely left her residence. That day, Indira Gandhi decided not to wear her usual bulletproof vest, thinking it would make her figure look fatter.
Extremist sentiments against Indira intensified after the storming of the Golden Temple in the city of Armritsar, where the separatists stored weapons and ammunition. The Sikhs vowed to take revenge on the authorities for the desecration of the shrine. One of the Sikh guards had connections with gangs, but Indira Gandhi, despite warnings, never changed security. Protests broke out across India against the murder of the beloved prime minister. A wave of outrages swept across Punjab, killing hundreds of local residents.
June 28, 1914 - assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary
19-year-old student Gavrilo Princip ended up in the same place where the car with the Archduke allegedly drove by mistake. The criminal used a pistol. Political instability in the Balkans was caused by the aggressive policy of Austria-Hungary, and the murder of the heir to the throne, according to the logic of nationalist terrorists, should have contributed to the acquisition of absolute sovereignty by Bosnia and Serbia. Instead of a kind of “Balkan knot,” Princip and his accomplices unleashed a knot of war. The assassination of the Archduke became the signal for the First World War.
October 6, 1981 - assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat
During a military parade in Cairo, soldiers poured out of a truck and began shooting at the president and his entourage. Sadat and seven other senior officials were killed. In all likelihood, the mastermind of the crime was the extremist group "Muslim Brotherhood", which wanted to disrupt the process of peace negotiations between Egypt and Israel, initiated by Sadat. True, one of the Libyan gangs claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack, and the nephew of the murdered president suspected the United States and Israel of the assassination attempt. The killers accomplished nothing except the crime itself. Sadat's work was successfully continued by Vice President Hosni Mubarak, who, by the way, was lucky during the same assassination attempt - a bullet hit him in the arm.
August 17, 1988 - assassination of Pakistani President Muhammad Zia ul-Haq
The president died in a plane crash, killing about 40 other people. However, after a while it became clear that it was a terrorist attack - experts invited from the United States found traces of explosives in the wreckage of the aircraft. Probably, after the detonation, a box of poisonous gas opened on board, which struck the pilots. The murdered president pursued a conservative policy, which was not supported by all members of the government. As a result, several months before the terrorist attack, he fired many officials, explaining that “Pakistan is too undeveloped a country to have a democratic system of government,” and he headed the government himself. It is difficult to judge the development of Pakistan under the next president, but after the death of ul-Haq, there is one less dictator in the world.
May 21, 1991 - assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi
A female suicide bomber with a belt filled with explosives exploded in close proximity to Gandhi. Before the start of his election speech, she approached the politician to present him with garlands of flowers, traditional for these places, as a greeting. The suicide bomber (or, according to another version, two) was recruited by the extremist organization Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which launched its activities in neighboring Sri Lanka. Since 1987, India has intervened in the fight against nationalists from the LTTE, including sending troops to the neighboring state. Twenty-eight people were convicted of some form of involvement in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. The “Tigers” continued to organize terrorist attacks and assassinations, and only in recent years have they started talking about their readiness to resolve issues by “political methods.” Gandhi's widow, Sonia, became the leader of the Indian National Congress, and the candidate proposed to her was chosen as prime minister.
February 28, 1986 - assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme
When the Palme couple were returning from an evening film show, an unknown person fired two shots in the center of Stockholm, one of which killed Palme. Failed actor and drug addict Christer Pettersson was arrested on suspicion of the crime. However, lawyers soon proved the charges unfounded and the man, who received a life sentence, was released.
The crime remained unsolved, and therefore its reasons are unknown. Among dozens of versions, the most interesting are those associated with the Italian Masonic lodge, the intelligence services of the USSR, USA and South Africa, and Kurdish associations. Sweden remained Sweden, although Palme's murder hit the authority of this Scandinavian country. The prime minister's successor, Ingvar Karlsson, assembled a new cabinet in which exactly half of the ministers - 11 out of 22 - represented the better half of humanity.
November 4, 1995 - assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
A religious student shot the Prime Minister three times as he approached a car after a rally of thousands. The killer himself immediately stated the reason for the assassination attempt: the student was defending the people of Israel from the Oslo agreement. We are talking about peace agreements with the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat. The process of establishing relations between Israel and Palestine is still ongoing, but it is too early to talk about establishing final peace.
December 27, 2007 - assassination of Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto
After speaking at a rally, a suicide bomber shot Bhutto in the neck and chest, and then blew himself up and those around him. The terrorist attack killed over 20 people. Having entered into a harsh confrontation with dictatorial President Pervez Musharraf, the country's first female prime minister incurred the wrath of a number of terrorist organizations that supported the corrupt regime. Musharraf expressed outrage at the murder of the prime minister and promised to find the killers, suspecting Taliban extremists in the crime. However, in August 2013, it was the ex-president who was charged with murder. Now the former politician is under arrest in Pakistan.
April 4, 1968 - Martin Luther King is assassinated.
A well-known African-American Baptist preacher, speaker, and leader of the Black Civil Rights Movement in the United States, King became the first active figure in the US black movement and the first prominent fighter for black civil rights in the United States, fighting discrimination, racism and segregation. At the end of March 1968, he came to preach in Memphis, Tennessee. On April 4 at 6:01 p.m., King was fatally wounded by a sniper while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. King's killer turned out to be one James Earl Ray. The court sentenced him to 99 years in prison. It was officially recognized that Ray was a lone killer, but many believe that King fell victim to a conspiracy.
August 20, 1940 - murder of one of the organizers of the October Revolution of 1917, Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky, being in exile, posed a serious danger to the USSR, since he enjoyed enormous authority and controlled a significant part of the world communist movement. The first murder attempt was unsuccessful. The raiders, led by the Mexican artist Siqueiros, burst into the room where Trotsky was, shot all the cartridges and hastily disappeared. Trotsky, who managed to hide behind the bed with his wife and grandson, was not injured. Then NKVD agent Ramon Mercader was introduced to Trotsky. On August 20, Mercader came to Trotsky to show his manuscript. Trotsky sat down to read it, and at this time Mercader was struck with an ice pick, which he carried under his cloak. The wound reached 7 centimeters in depth, but Trotsky lived for almost another day and died on August 21. The Soviet government publicly disavowed any involvement in the crime. The killer was sentenced by a Mexican court to twenty years in prison. In 1960, Ramon Mercader, who was released from prison and came to the USSR, was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and awarded the Order of Lenin.
December 1, 1934 - assassination of the leader of Leningrad Sergei Kirov.
With the murder of Sergei Kirov, the Leningrad party boss, another pogrom of Stalin's competitors began in the Soviet Union. Kirov was shot by party instructor Leonid Nikolaev, whose wife Milda Draule Sergei Mironovich courted with revolutionary fervor. A jealous husband shot Kirov in the back of the head as he was leaving his office in Smolny. The killer immediately tried to commit suicide, but he failed.
Later, Nikolaev was shot in court. Within a few hours after Kirov’s murder, it was officially announced that he had become a victim of conspirators - enemies of the USSR, and on the same day the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR adopted a resolution “On amendments to the existing criminal procedural codes of the union republics.” The ensuing mass repressions against party and economic leaders in the USSR were called “Yezhovshchina.” According to one version, Stalin was directly behind the murder of Sergei Kirov, since this gave him the opportunity to hunt supporters of his main competitors.
September 1, 1911 - assassination of Russian Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin
The last reformer of the Russian Empire, the author of the agrarian reform, which caused peasant revolts and many disputes. In a short period of time from 1905 to 1911, 11 assassination attempts were prepared and carried out on Stolypin, the last of which achieved its goal. On September 1, Nicholas II and Stolypin attended the play “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” at the Kiev City Theater. At that time, the head of the Kyiv security department had information that terrorists had arrived in the city with the aim of attacking a high-ranking official, and possibly the Tsar himself. The information was received from Dmitry Bogrov. During the second intermission, Bogrov approached Stolypin and fired twice: the first bullet hit his arm, the second bullet hit his stomach, hitting his liver. After being wounded, Stolypin crossed the Tsar, sank heavily into a chair and said: “Happy to die for the Tsar.” According to one version, the assassination attempt was organized with the assistance of the Security Branch of the Russian Empire.
March 15, 44 - assassination of Emperor Julius Caesar
The most daring murder in world history - the emperor was killed right at a Senate meeting. One of the conspirators was Brutus, whom the dictator considered his son. According to legend, seeing him among the murderers, Caesar exclaimed: “And you, Brutus, are against me.” 23 puncture wounds were found on Caesar’s body, however, the conspirators also wounded each other while trying to stab the dictator. This murder is the result of a conspiracy by a group of senators. They wanted to overthrow Julius Caesar, who, during the civil war, turned from a military leader into the sole ruler of Rome. After Caesar was killed, the conspirators tried to make a speech to the senators, but the Senate fled in fear.
December 7, 43 - assassination of the philosopher and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero
Confident of victory and convinced of the impending liberation of Rome, Cicero could not expect betrayal on the part of Octavian Augustus, Caesar's nephew and heir, who entered into an agreement with the defeated Mark Antony and Mark Aemilius Lepidus, and, forming the Second Triumvirate, they moved troops to Rome . Deprived of protection, the Senate recognized their power. Anthony ensured that Cicero's name was included in the proscription lists of "enemies of the people", which the triumvirs published immediately after the formation of the union. Cicero tried to escape to Greece, but the assassins overtook him on December 7, 43 BC, not far from his Tuscullan villa. When Cicero noticed the killers catching up with him, he ordered the slaves carrying him: “Place the palanquin right there,” and then, sticking his head out from behind the curtain, put his neck under the sword of the centurion sent to kill him. The severed head and hands of the best writer of the "golden age" of Roman literature were delivered to Antony and then placed on the oratorical platform of the forum.
January 16, 1919 - assassination of German Communist Party leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht
On January 5, 1919, Berlin workers, led by members of the leftist organization "Spartacus League", whose leaders were also Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, began an armed uprising with the aim of establishing Soviet power. On January 12, by order of Minister of War Gustav Noske, three thousand soldiers were brought into the city and brutally suppressed the uprising. On January 15, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were arrested in a Berlin apartment. After this, they were taken to the Eden Hotel, which became the headquarters of the punitive expedition of government troops. Here Luxemburg and Liebknecht were interrogated by Captain Pabst, who at the end of the interrogation stated that the arrested would be taken to Moabit prison. Liebknecht was taken out first, but he was killed right in the hotel lobby. A few minutes later Rosa Luxemburg left the hotel. When leaving the hotel, one of the guards hit Luxemburg twice on the head with a rifle butt. She fell, after which she was carried into the car, where they continued to beat her, after which one of the officers shot her in the temple. Then the body of the revolutionary was thrown into the canal.
If the socialist revolution in industrialized Germany had won, then the victory of the revolution in agrarian Russia would have faded into the background. Lenin would have regressed from the leader of the world revolutionary movement to the position of a local leader, moreover, with a tarnished reputation due to the Brest Peace. Accordingly, Lenin could not allow this and sent his emissary, a prominent figure of the International, Karl Radek, to Berlin. The hypothesis states that after Radek appeared in Berlin in early January 1919, the enemies’ hunt for Luxemburg and Liebknecht was soon crowned with success. Allegedly, it was Radek who revealed to the punitive forces the location of the revolutionary leaders, where they were arrested.
December 15, 1959 - assassination of the leader of Ukrainian nationalists Stepan Bandera
Bandera was released from a German concentration camp in 1944, and has since lived in West Germany. Organizing various anti-Soviet combinations, he kept in touch with the underground on the territory of the USSR. This went on for 15 years, after which Bandera was killed. KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky, at the entrance of the house where the OUN leader lived, shot him in the face from a special device with a stream of potassium cyanide solution. Lviv resident Stashinsky also killed another leader of Ukrainian nationalists, Lev Rebet. The KGB agent later defected to West Berlin, where he confessed to the murders. His sentence was quite lenient - the agent received only 8 years for double murder and working for foreign intelligence services.
December 16, 1916 - murder of Grigory Rasputin.
Rasputin knew how to stop the blood of a prince suffering from hemophilia, for which he enjoyed enormous influence in the royal family. Rasputin was an active supporter of an alliance with Germany against the British and French, which was largely the reason for his murder. This is confirmed by the participation in the assassination attempt of British intelligence officer Oswald Rainer. In addition to him, Prince Yusupov (he studied at Oxford, emigrated to London), State Duma deputy Purishkevich and the Tsar’s brother, Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, had a hand in the murder of Rasputin. All four were confident that Rasputin was pushing the country towards peace with Germany, which was not part of the plans of both the State Duma and influential circles abroad. Having invited Rasputin to visit, the conspirators mixed cyanide into his cakes. However, the poison did not take the royal favorite. After that, 11 bullets were fired at Rasputin and then, still alive, they were thrown into the Neva under the ice.
March 13, 1881 - assassination of Russian Emperor Alexander II.
In the morning, Emperor Alexander II went to the traditional parade in the arena. Prime Minister Loris-Melikov tried to persuade the monarch not to travel, but the emperor was adamant. He got to the arena perfectly, after watching the parade, the emperor had to go back. The emperor's carriage with his retinue was following along the Neva, when suddenly a man ran out of the crowd, in his hands there was a bundle. With a sharp movement of the hand, the bundle flew under the wheels of Alexander II's carriage. There was an explosion, a roar of breaking glass and the squealing of horses. The terrorist was captured. The emperor survived and quickly got out of the carriage. The monarch was interested in the health of the wounded. Then he approached the terrorist, looked at him, and calmly said, “well done.” Afterwards, he headed towards the carriage.
Not far away, another terrorist was waiting for the moment when Alexander II would approach him. The "People's Volunteer" threw another bomb at the feet of the emperor. There was an explosion. The road instantly turned red, people lay around, dead and alive, maimed and miraculously escaped injury. The legs of Alexander II were crushed, there were no people nearby who could provide assistance. The monarch's condition was extremely difficult. The emperor was put into a sleigh and sent to the palace. There, after some time, he died.
January 17, 1961 - assassination of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.
Patrice Lumumba, who became prime minister in May 1960 as a result of his party's victory in the country's first parliamentary elections, was assassinated in January 1961. Soon after his appointment, the pro-Western leader of Katanga province, Moise Tshombe, declared the independence of his region, promising to end the rebellion only if Lumumba resigned. As a result, in September of the same year, the latter was removed from office and placed under house arrest. In response, Lumumba declared the removal illegal, and the leaders of the main parliamentary parties took his side, reinstating the prime minister to his post. Despite the position of the parliament, the UN forces that arrived in the country ignored this decision and began to seek the arrest of the head of government.
Lumumba was soon captured and transported to Katanga, where he was tortured and summarily executed in January 1961. The sentence was carried out by Katangese soldiers under the command of Belgian officers. At first the bodies were buried at the scene of the execution, but then, in order to hide what they had done, they were exhumed. Lumumba's body was dismembered, dissolved in acid, and the remains were then burned.
For a long time, the circumstances of Lumumba's death remained a mystery until his son Francois submitted a request to Belgium. As a result, in 2002, a parliamentary commission reconstructed the course of events and came to the conclusion that King Baudouin I of Belgium knew about the plans to assassinate Lumumba, that the country actually paid almost 6 million euros for his elimination and bears “moral responsibility” for this death. As a result, then-Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt made an official apology to Congo.
June 4, 1968 - assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy.
Robert Kennedy's decision to run for the Democratic presidential nomination was not taken lightly. The Kennedy family, frightened by the tragedy in Dallas, did everything they could to dissuade him. However, like his older brother, he was a man who was not easily intimidated.
June 4, 1968 became the apotheosis of Robert Kennedy's election campaign. The presidential candidate strengthened his position in the fight against his main rival from the Democratic Party, Eugene McCarthy, by winning in the state of California.
On the morning of June 5, Robert Kennedy was met in a room at the Ambassador Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. He had been up all night, but no one noticed any signs of fatigue on the presidential candidate's face as he addressed volunteers supporting his campaign.
Being several minutes late, the presidential candidate decided to take a shortcut to the hall where the press conference was to be held. Kennedy passed a series of revolving doors and found himself in a narrow corridor filled with an enthusiastic audience. The people who gave him their votes were eager to look at their idol. No one paid attention to the thin, black-haired young man who stood silently leaning against the refrigerator.
Robert Kennedy, accompanied by his wife Ethel, who was expecting their eleventh child, stopped to greet his supporters. And here
the young man standing by the refrigerator pulled out a gun and pulled the trigger twice.
The first bullet hit the senator in the shoulder, the second pierced his head. But the crazed killer continued shooting. A hotel employee tried to snatch the gun from him. A few minutes later the police arrived and handcuffs were snapped onto the criminal's wrists. Robert Kennedy was immediately taken by ambulance to Los Angeles Central Hospital.
A group of experienced surgeons operated on Robert Kennedy, who never regained consciousness, for almost four hours. He died on the night of June 6, approximately twenty hours after the shots were fired at the Ambassador Hotel.
Meanwhile, the police continued interrogating the killer, who for 24 hours stubbornly refused to give his name. Police were able to identify the killer from the license plate of the pistol, which was registered in the name of Jordanian immigrant Sirhan B. Sirhan. Sirhan, who by his own admission once respected Robert Kennedy, came to hate the senator because of his pro-Israel stance. At his trial, Sirhan tried to feign insanity, but was found guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
27 August 1979 - assassination of Earl Louis Mountbatten.
Earl Mountbatten, uncle of Elizabeth II's husband, Duke Philip of Edinburgh, was a highly respected naval admiral and the last viceroy of India to gain independence.
For more than thirty years he vacationed with his family in his own house on the northern coast of Ireland in a quiet fishing village. Local residents knew and loved these kind-hearted people well.
On that fateful morning, the count and members of his family left the house and headed to the moorings of their small yacht. Before the boat had time to leave the harbor, an explosion was heard on board. A strong explosion lifted the yacht into the air, and it fell into pieces.
Mountbatten, his fourteen-year-old grandson Nicholas and seventeen-year-old helmsman Paul Maxwell were killed in the explosion. Lord Mountbatten's daughter Lady Braebourne and her son Timothy were seriously injured, and her 82-year-old mother-in-law died in hospital the next day.
That evening, the Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility for the bombing of Lord Mountbatten's yacht. The terrorists' attempts to justify the murder of an old man who had long retired from politics (since 1965 he no longer took an active part in it) and members of his family caused indignation in various sectors of English society. A fisherman from Mullaghmore, the seaside village where Lord Mountbatten's family loved to holiday, expressed his deepest contempt for the heartless killers: "The man was a friend of ours. He came here every year and we all loved him."
January 30, 1948 - assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
On January 30, 1948, Gandhi woke up at dawn and began working on a draft constitution for India to be presented to Congress. The whole day was spent discussing with colleagues the future fundamental law of the country. It was time for evening prayer, and, accompanied by his niece, he went out onto the front lawn. As usual, the gathered crowd loudly greeted the “father of the nation.”
Taking advantage of the confusion, a man approached Gandhi and, snatching a pistol, fired three times.
The first two bullets pierced Gandhi's exhausted body, the third lodged in his lung. The old sage whispered: “Thank God” - and died with a smile on his face. The killer turned out to be Nathuram Godse, an extremist publisher and editor of one of the provincial newspapers.
Authorities soon discovered that the killer did not act alone. A powerful anti-government conspiracy was uncovered. Eight people appeared in court. All of them were found guilty of murder. The two were sentenced to death and hanged on November 15, 1949. The remaining conspirators received long prison sentences.
April 14, 1865 - assassination of US President Abraham Lincoln.
The sixteenth President of the United States was mortally wounded on April 14, 1865 at Ford's Theater in Washington, where, in the company of his wife and several acquaintances, he watched the comedy “My American Cousin” from a box. A few days earlier, the capitulation of the Southern States ended the Civil War and the motives for the murder were connected with it: the killer was the famous actor and secret agent and supporter of the Confederacy, John Wilkes Booth. He and his like-minded people plotted against the main enemy of the southerners, President Lincoln.
At about 10 p.m., during the funniest part of the play, Booth entered the presidential box and fired a pocket pistol into the back of Lincoln's head. After that, he wounded the officer who was trying to detain him and jumped onto the stage with a pathetic exclamation in Latin, “Such is the fate of tyrants.” Booth, while jumping from a three-meter height, became entangled in a hanging American flag, fell so badly that he broke his leg, but still managed to escape from the theater. 12 days later, he and an accomplice were overtaken in Virginia and killed in a shootout. By that time, President Lincoln had long been dead - the wound turned out to be fatal and he died without regaining consciousness at about 7 o'clock in the morning on April 15, 1865. In the summer of the same year, eight of Bout's accomplices in the conspiracy were brought to trial, four of whom were executed, having been found guilty of an anti-state conspiracy.
March 16, 1978 - assassination of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Aldo Moro became the leader of the Christian Democratic Party, one of the most influential in the country. At the same time, he pursued a consistent policy of cooperation with socialist political organizations, and in the 1970s he initiated the admission of communists to the government, which was an unprecedented step for Western Europe during the Cold War era. In total, Aldo Moro headed five Italian cabinets. At the same time, from 1969 to 1974, he headed the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
On March 16, 1978, Aldo Moro was driving to Sunday morning mass. On one of the central streets of Rome, his car was blocked and pushed to the side of the road by three cars, from which five armed men and one woman immediately jumped out. Within three minutes, Moro's driver, his personal guard and three security agents assigned to Moro as a member of parliament were killed, and he himself was kidnapped and taken to an unknown location.
Already in the afternoon of March 16, representatives of the kidnappers contacted the editors of one of the leading Italian newspapers, announced that the kidnapping was carried out by the Red Brigades and put forward their demands.
The government immediately took a firm position, declaring that it would not negotiate with terrorists. A grand operation was launched to search for Aldo Moro, in which 35 thousand carabinieri and soldiers were involved. On April 18, a safe house was discovered where Moreau was kept for some time, but the police were too late.
On the morning of May 9, the body of Aldo Moro, shot eleven times, was found in the trunk of a red Renault, parked halfway between the CDA headquarters and the headquarters of the Communist Party of Italy.
Aldo Moro's six direct captors, as well as about sixty people involved with him, were brought to trial in 1982. However, there are still a number of alternative versions that believe that there are still too many questions in the story of the murder of an influential politician. Thus, some Czech journalists put forward a version according to which the kidnapping of Moro could have been supported by the intelligence services of communist Czechoslovakia. Documents were found in the archives according to which in the 1970s Czechoslovakia provided certain support to the Red Brigades, in particular, it helped this organization with weapons, its state security agencies instructed the Italians, and also helped a number of members of this group hide on their territory from persecution. True, today there is no direct evidence that the Czechoslovakian special services oversaw the operation with Moro, as well as the version that he was kept in the Czechoslovak embassy and that is why they could not be found.
September 6, 1966 - assassination of South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd.
On September 6, 1966, at 2:15 p.m., courier Dimitris Tsafendas, a South African of Greek-Portuguese descent, entered the South African Parliament building in Cape Town. Approaching Verwoerd, he stabbed the creator of apartheid four professionally choreographed stabs in the neck and chest. Hendrik Verwoerd died on the spot. Dimitris Tsafendas was a mentally unstable person. In his youth, a member of the Communist Party, he was a member of the Protestant sect and motivated the murder by “Verwoerd’s insufficient concern for the whites.” Tsafendas was imprisoned in Pretoria, and after 28 years he was transferred to a psychiatric hospital near Krugersdorp, where he died on October 7, 1999.
