In today’s lawless world, political assassination is the new growth industry – and anyone, famous or not, is a potential victim. Government-sanctioned killings are proliferating, with Russia, Israel, Iran and India leading the pack. While lone gunmen and crazed zealots still pose random threats, state-organised, premeditated assassination plots are being normalised and popularised. Murder Inc is going global with a licence to kill.
The assassination business was mostly a superpower monopoly during the cold war. US- and Soviet-directed operations targeted high-profile figures such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Chile’s Salvador Allende and Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito. Some “hits” were more notorious than others. In 1940, a member of Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD, assassinated the dissident Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky in Mexico City with an ice-pick. Who shot Sweden’s prime minister Olaf Palme in 1986 is still disputed.
