page_title: Assassination
section_title: Cold War and beyond
hierarchical_section_title: Assassination / Use in history / Cold War and beyond
caption_attribution_description: English: Picture of President Kennedy in the limousine in Dallas, Texas, on Main Street, minutes before the assassination. Also in the presidential limousine are Jackie Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connally, and his wife, Nellie.
context_page_description: Assassination is the act of deliberately killing a prominent person, such as a head of state or head of government. An assassination may be prompted by political and military motives. It is an act that may be done for financial gain, to avenge a grievance, from a desire to acquire fame or notoriety, or because of a military, security, insurgent or secret police group's command to carry out the assassination. Acts of assassination have been performed since ancient times.
context_section_description: Liaquat Ali Khan, the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, was assassinated by Saad Akbar, a lone assassin, in 1951. Conspiracy theorists believe his conflict with certain members of the Pakistani military (Rawalpindi conspiracy) or suppression of Communists and antagonism towards the Soviet Union, were potential reasons for his assassination.
  In 1960, Inejiro Asanuma, Chairman of the Japanese Socialist Party, was assassinated in a stabbing by an extreme rightist.
  The U.S. Senate Select Committee chaired by Senator Frank Church (the Church Committee) reported in 1975 that it had found "concrete evidence of at least eight plots involving the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro from 1960 to 1965."
  Most major powers repudiated Cold War assassination tactics, though many allege that this was merely a smokescreen for political benefit and that covert and illegal training of assassins continues today, with Russia, Israel, the U.S., Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and other nations accused of engaging in such operations. In 1986, U.S. President Ronald Reagan (who survived an assassination attempt himself) ordered the Operation El Dorado Canyon air raid on Libya in which one of the primary targets was the home residence of Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi. Gaddafi escaped unharmed; however, his adopted daughter Hanna was claimed to be one of the civilian casualties.
  In the Philippines, the assassination of Benigno Aquino, Jr. triggered the eventual downfall of the 20-year autocratic rule of President Ferdinand Marcos. Aquino, a former Senator and a leading figure of the political opposition, was assassinated in 1983 at the Manila International Airport (now the Ninoy Aquino International Airport) upon returning home from exile. His death thrust his widow, Corazon Aquino, into the limelight and, ultimately, the presidency following the peaceful 1986 EDSA Revolution.
  After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the new Islamic government of Iran began an international campaign of assassination that lasted into the 1990s. At least 162 killings in 19 countries have been linked to the senior leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This campaign came to an end after the Mykonos restaurant assassinations, because a German court publicly implicated senior members of the government and issued arrest warrants for Ali Fallahian, the head of the Iranian Intelligence. Evidence indicates that Fallahian's personal involvement and individual responsibility for the murders were far more pervasive than his current indictment record represents.
  Anwar Sadat, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt (formerly President of the United Arab Republic), was assassinated October 6, 1981, during the annual parade celebrating Operation Badr, the opening maneuver of the Yom Kippur War.
  Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was murdered by a gun-wielding man close to midnight on February 28, 1986, after having visited a cinema with his wife. The couple was not accompanied by a bodyguard detail. In 2020 Swedish prosecutors named Stig Engström as the killer.
  On August 17, 1988, President of Pakistan Gen. M. Zia ul Haq died alongside 31 others including the Chief of Staff of the Pakistani Armed Forces, the US Ambassador to Pakistan and the chief of the US Military Mission to Pakistan when his C-130 transport plane mysteriously crashed. The crash is widely considered – in Pakistan – to be an act of political assassination.
  In post-Saddam Iraq, the Shiite-dominated government used death squads to perform extrajudicial executions of radical Sunni Iraqis, with some alleging that the death squads were trained by the U.S.  Concrete allegations have since surfaced that the Iranian government has actively armed and funded Shia death-squads in post-Saddam Iraq.
  In India, Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi (neither of whom were related to Mahatma Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1948), were assassinated in 1984 and 1991 respectively. The assassinations were linked to separatist movements in Punjab and northern Sri Lanka, respectively.
  In Israel, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin wa
caption: President Kennedy minutes before his assassination, November 22, 1963.
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