Analysis: The How and Why of Modern Assassinations
February 20, 2012 5 Comments
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Reports on the discovery last week of a synchronized plan to attack Israeli diplomats in India, Georgia, and Thailand, are still unfolding. At least four people —including the wife of an Israeli diplomat— were injured in New Delhi, when a bomb ripped through a van belonging to the Israeli embassy there. Another bomb was defused by Georgian counterterrorist forces after it was found fastened under an Israeli diplomatic vehicle in Tbilisi. And in Bangkok, two Iranian nationals were arrested after a bomb they were manufacturing exploded prematurely in a rented house in the Thai capital. In an interview I gave this past weekend to The Journal, one of Ireland’s most popular newsmagazines, I noted that the use of targeted assassinations as a means of achieving broader political goals is, of course, not new. But there are definite trends that we have been able to see developing during the past decade or so. For starters, even though the methods of assassination vary greatly, there are common trends one can point out, particularly in the organizational infrastructure of state-sponsored assassination operations. There is, to be precise, an increasing complexity in the way these operations are planned prior to their execution by specialized hit teams. I told The Journal’s interviewer, Susan Ryan, that the increasing sophistication of these types of operations can be appreciated by comparing older examples with case studies that are more recent. Take, for instance, the Black September killings, conducted by Israeli intelligence in response to the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Read more of this post
























