Assassinations of world leaders. See what “Military dictatorship” is in other dictionaries. During the period of military dictatorships, the army was

“He’s a son of a bitch, of course, but he’s our son of a bitch!” The catchphrase attributed to American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is most likely made up. No documented evidence has been found that Roosevelt actually said this, and it is not even clear who he was talking about. However, the quote, albeit fictitious, accurately diagnosed the state of affairs.

Both Washington and Moscow had enough of their own “sons of bitches.” During the Cold War, which broke out in the late 40s and lasted until the end of the 1980s, the USA and the USSR did not disdain friendship with any leaders if they promised to either stop or, on the contrary, support the spread of socialist ideas.

For forty years, the world has been a chessboard of two military blocs, where both the “defenders of the free world” and the “progressive socialist countries” sought to beat their opponents by any means and with the help of anyone. The cunning dictators understood this perfectly and used it for their own benefit. It would be a sin not to take advantage of the fact that the president or the secretary general will give up on corruption, the dispersal of demonstrations and the execution of dissidents, and even give a fat tranche, help with weapons and military experts, just to preserve the territory on the map for one or another camp.

The Cold War was a golden age for dictators great and small. To prove this, Disgusting Men presents a selection of 14 authoritarian leaders of the Third World who lived happily and did assorted obscenities against the backdrop of the ideological hostility of the two camps.

Latin America

Alfredo Stroessner

Country: Paraguay
Years in power: 1954-1989
Patron: USA

A model of dictatorial longevity, Alfredo Stroessner ruled Paraguay for more than 30 years. Having come to power, having overthrown the president (at that time Stroessner was the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Paraguay), the dictator extended his powers in elections seven times (either with one candidate or with puppets as rivals). Throughout his reign, the country was officially in a state of siege.

While Stroessner ruled Paraguay, the country gradually emerged from the poverty where it had been at the beginning of the 20th century. After building a hydroelectric power station and becoming a major soybean exporter, the small and landlocked country gained economic stability. However, there were plenty of downsides to Stroessner’s rule: from repressions and executions (thousands of people were killed, tens of thousands were thrown into prison) to love for Nazism. A descendant of German emigrants, Stroessner gladly welcomed Nazis who fled Europe, including the notorious Dr. Mengele. In Asuncion they were greeted by portraits of Stroessner and the official slogan of his reign - “Peace and Progress.”

The United States, with difficulty, tolerated Stroessner's sympathies for the executioners from his historical homeland, and, moreover, provided the Paraguayan leader with all possible support, including investments and loans. The dictator established himself as a staunch anti-communist, brutally dispersing any left-wing associations, and helped other right-wing pro-American dictators throughout Latin America. During the Cold War, this was more than enough. But with its end, Stroessner’s star also set: after the 1988 uprising, the longtime dictator was forced to flee the country and take refuge in Brazil, where he lived until his death in 2006.

Rafael Leonidas Trujillo

Country: Dominican Republic
Years in power: 1930-1961
Patron: USA

American writer with Dominican roots Junot Díaz called Trujillo “the most dictatorial dictator who has ever ruled.” This may be a bit of an exaggeration, especially when we remember that Trujillo’s contemporaries included such nice people as Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. But by the standards of a small state on the island of Haiti, literally right next door to the United States, Trujillo was a true demon who ruthlessly ruled the country for more than three decades. During this time, more than 50,000 people became victims of his repressions.

At the same time, Trujillo was not interested in any ideologies, except for a manic obsession with himself. El Jefe, “The Chief,” as Trujillo nicknamed himself, renamed the state capital of Santo Domingo Ciudad Trujillo (“the city of Trujillo”) and ordered local churches to display posters “God is in heaven, Trujillo is on earth.” Is it worth mentioning little things, like the fact that Trujillo gave his family monopoly power over the economy of the Dominican Republic or amassed a collection of 10,000 ties?

For a long time, Washington turned a blind eye to Trujillo’s excesses, especially given his policy of peaceful coexistence with the United States and regular payments on the national debt. However, in the early 1960s, things went badly for Trujillo: the dictator organized an assassination attempt on Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt, which displeased not only his neighbors in the region, but also powerful people in the White House. Against the backdrop of a growing political and economic crisis, Trujillo was shot in his own Chevrolet. Rumors about the involvement of the CIA in the death of the dictator are still being circulated, but, as usual, nothing can be proven for sure.

Francois Duvalier

Country: Haiti
Years in power: 1957-1971
Patron: USA

There were many dictators in the 20th century, but few combined mystery, style and brutality as stunningly as did François Duvalier, the black University of Michigan-educated doctor who returned to Haiti for absolute power. The small state was engulfed in a series of political upheavals, and as a result of intrigues, Duvalier managed to take the helm. But, unlike many of his predecessors, he lasted a long time.

Drawing on the Haitian religion of voodoo, Dr. Duvalier (or simply “Papa Doc”) created his own special service - practically guardsmen, but supposedly endowed with ancient witchcraft powers. Duvalier himself acted as Baron Saturday, the darkest of voodoo deities, the embodiment of death. Under a mystical veil, Papa Doc acted like a classic dictator: he suppressed the press, the opposition and any dissenters, lavishly imprisoned and killed. During his reign, 30,000 Haitians said goodbye to life in Duvalier prisons.

With son and heir "Baby Doc" Duvalier

The dictator instilled incredible fear in his people and sucked all resources from poor Haiti, including the blood of his compatriots - citizens were forced to donate blood, which was then sold to the United States. Papa Doc and his family were getting rich, and Americans habitually put up with the disadvantages of another “son of a bitch,” because he reliably protected Haiti from the communists. And when John Kennedy, indignant, refused to support the Haitian regime, Duvalier said that he had sent evil spirits to the US President. A few weeks later, Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas.

Subsequent presidents chose to support Papa Doc, and he continued to rule until his death in 1971. His son, Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier inherited his father's government power and ruthlessness, but not his ability to inspire terror; in the 1980s, Baby Doc was overthrown and the Duvalier era in Haiti ended.

Augusto Pinochet

Country: Chile
Years in power: 1973-1990
Patron: USA

Compared to such Latin American eccentrics as Trujillo or Duvalier, Augusto Pinochet, who led the coup against socialist President Salvador Allende in 1973 and then ruled as junta leader, president and dictator for almost 20 years, looks almost modest. With “only” 3,000 executions during his reign and significant progress in the economy, the right even praises Pinochet for his progressive rule.

Yet General Pinochet, a stylish military man in pressed uniforms and dark glasses, was a dictator through and through. He organized secret concentration camps throughout the country, planned the murders of enemies of the regime abroad, and, having adopted the constitution in 1981, blocked the effect of articles on elections and parties until better times. He was helped to make economic policy by the “Chicago boys” - Chilean economists who studied in Chicago according to the patterns of Milton Friedman and other adherents of the free market.

In part, the “Chicago School” really helped Chile: under Pinochet, big business developed, and the IMF, World Bank and the United States provided extensive assistance. GDP grew, as did the country's external debt, and inequality among Chileans and the plight of workers only worsened.

Pinochet had to give up power in 1990, when in a popular referendum to extend his term of office for another 8 years, 55% of Chileans said “No”. Mass unrest then reached such a point that Pinochet had no option to suppress the protest by force - up to a million citizens took to the streets. Pinochet left on his own. Already in the 2000s, he, a very old man, was deprived of his immunity and tried in cases related to corruption, kidnappings and murders. The dictator's life ended before the judicial red tape: in 2006, he died after a heart attack.

Fidel Castro

Country: Cuba
Years in power: 1959-2011
Cartridge: USSR

The absolute dominance of pro-Western dictators in Latin America is understandable: perceiving this region as its own backyard, the United States was especially zealous in clearing it of any germs of socialism. But we all know that since the late 1950s the USSR had its own man in Havana - Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, the leader of the revolution that overthrew the pro-American regime of Fulgencio Batista. Castro entrenched himself as the leader of Cuba for so long that he won the competition in the category “the longest reigning head of state other than monarchs in the 20th century.” And, as you understand from this text, the competition was off the charts. The Comandante was in power for 52 years.

In life and death, Castro remains contradictory: on the one hand, he harshly repressed opponents (from 15 to 17 thousand executed since coming to power, according to the Black Book of Communism) and suppressed freedom of speech, on the other hand, Cuban education and medicine under him reached heights extremely rare for Latin America in the 20th century, and the nation perceived him as a leader opposing the power of American capital. Unlike many of the antiheroes on this list, Castro truly believed in his ideology. As his German biographer Volker Skirka wrote: “He will go down in history as one of the few revolutionaries who remained true to his principles.”

Until the death of Soviet power as a result of perestroika and the collapse of the Union, the USSR was an important patron for Fidel. Having almost started World War III as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1961, when Khrushchev decided to place nuclear warheads in Cuba (with Fidel then advocating war with the United States), Cuba remained a partner of the USSR in the region and around the world. Castro glorified communism and sent Cuban commandos to participate in local conflicts like the civil war in Angola, where they performed well. Cuba had a hard time with the fall of the USSR, but, unlike many of its Soviet allies, Havana remained committed to socialism, and Fidel outlived the Soviet Union by 25 years.

Africa

Mengistu Haile Mariam

Country: Ethiopia
Years in power: 1977-1991
Cartridge: USSR

Colorful African dictators are poorly represented on this list only because it is often difficult to understand exactly whose side they took in the Cold War. On the Dark Continent they preferred to flirt with both sides. However, Mengistu Haile Mariam, a military man who concentrated power in his hands after the overthrow of the monarchy in Ethiopia in 1974, was an exception: he immediately announced that Ethiopia was moving to the construction of socialism and immediately unleashed the Red Terror.

Tellingly, its first victims were Ethiopian Marxists from the rival party, but then the repressions became widespread. Mengistu was called "Black Stalin" or "Red Negus" (negus is the title of the Ethiopian emperor), the brutality of his regime was outstanding even for Africa.

In total, during the years of Mengistu's reign, according to various estimates, from 100 to 500 thousand people died, including teenagers and children. The families of the victims bought the bodies for money - they were obliged to compensate the treasury for the cost of the bullets spent on the execution of their relatives. In parallel with this, Mengistu fought against illiteracy and inequality, built schools and generally achieved some success in the social sphere. But, for obvious reasons, he went down in history more as a ruthless “butcher from Ethiopia.”

Throughout Mengistu's career as a state leader, he was supported by Moscow. In 1977-1978, the Soviets even had to make a difficult choice: Ethiopia was attacked by its neighbors from Somalia, hoping to retake the disputed Ogaden region. The problem was that both the Ethiopians and the Somalis proclaimed themselves socialists, and everyone hoped for help from the USSR. As a result, the Kremlin chose Mengistu, greatly offending the Somali dictator Mohammed Siyad Barre, who defected to the United States. They stopped providing assistance to Mengistu in 1990, which was the reason for his end: without Soviet support and Soviet money, the regime collapsed, and in 1991 Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe, where he still lives, sentenced in absentia to death in his homeland. By the way, the only leader from this selection that is still alive.

Mobutu Sese Seko

Country: Zaire
Years in power: 1965-1997
Patron: USA

Mobutu has already appeared in one of the Disgusting Men ratings - we awarded him first place in the category. But he went down in history not only thanks to his stunning leopard print hat. For decades, Mobutu Sese Seko, who came to power after two military coups - in 1960 and 1965 (as a result of the first of them, the socialist Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was killed, whose name was later borne by the Moscow People's Friendship University for a long time) - ruled a huge country in the heart of Africa, former Belgian Congo, renamed Zaire under Mobutu.

The United States habitually forgave Mobutu for all his sins: his Zaire remained a reliable anti-communist stronghold in Central Africa. Thus, during the civil war in Angola (1970s-1980s), pro-Western groups that fought against pro-Soviet ones often hid in Zaire. The country was so strategically important that Mobutu was one of the few Third World leaders with whom every US president, from Dwight Eisenhower to George H. W. Bush, had contact.

However, as soon as the Cold War ended, Mobutu's former allies began to hint that it would be good to curb their appetites. But he stubbornly refused, which ultimately, combined with the economic and political crisis, led to an uprising against the regime. The overthrown Mobutu died in 1997 in Morocco, and Zaire was soon renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

East Asia

Kim Il Sung

Country: DPRK
Years in power: 1948-1994
Cartridge: USSR

What is the rating of dictators without representatives of the glorious Kim family! Its founder, Kim Il Sung, whose name means “rising sun” (this is a pseudonym, real name is Kim Song Ju) had every reason to thank Moscow for his rise to power. In the 1930s and 1940s, Kim, one of the commanders of partisan units that fought in Manchuria against the Japanese, was selected by Kremlin handlers as one of the key figures in post-war Korea.

Kim survived the Korean War of 1950-1953, which claimed the lives of more than 1.2 million people. After the war and the death of Joseph Stalin, the North Korean leader finally concentrated power in his hands. Most possible opponents simply disappeared. In the 1950s, Kim's cult of personality gained strength: the country was filled with his portraits and sayings, titles were heard louder and louder, and the official ideology of Juche (the concept of self-reliance) was written. It is unnecessary to explain what happens to those dissatisfied with such changes.

Juche emphasized the independence of the DPRK, including from foreign policy sponsors. This, however, did not prevent Kim from using the help of the USSR, Maoist China (between which he skillfully maneuvered) and other socialist countries throughout his reign. The DPRK itself was increasingly closed, turning into an uncomfortable citadel filled with portraits of the Great Leader, where dissent is so unacceptable that thoughts about it practically do not arise.

Economically, North Korea did not do well under Kim Sr. The militarized economy, built on self-financing and blocking any private initiatives, turned out to be not very effective. After the USSR and the social bloc cut off the flow of aid in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and even lean years began, famine began in the DPRK. In 1994, Kim Il Sung died, leaving his son Kim Jong Il a problematic inheritance. He himself, however, still formally heads the DPRK as the “Eternal President.” Yes, yes, Juche is such a magical system that even a leader who died 20 years ago remains with the people.

Park Chung Hee

Country: Republic of Korea
Years in power: 1962-1979
Patron: USA

It is not always easy to distinguish a brutal dictator from the father of a nation, especially in the case of Park Chung-hee, the third president of the Republic of Korea, under whose leadership South Korea was transformed from a third world agricultural country with a GDP on par with Nigeria into one of the most prosperous countries in Asia. Park pushed Korea to make an incredible leap forward, but was little gentler than Kim's northern neighbor. All this time, the Americans provided him with constant support.

Officer Park's biography is full of sharp turns: during the occupation regime, he served in the Japanese army and fought on the side of the Japanese, then joined a communist cell and almost ended up on the scaffold, but restored his reputation during the Korean War and rose to the rank of general. When the military junta overthrew President Syngman Rhee in 1960, Park Chung Hee found himself at the helm of power. Subsequently, however, he won completely legitimate elections: unlike his competitors, he had a plan to quickly modernize the South Korean economy.

Pak really succeeded in this field: during the years of his rule, the Republic of Kazakhstan became an economically independent power, with GDP growing by about 8-10% every year. Park's plan was effective: industrializing the economy with an export orientation, first developing heavy industry, then focusing on more high-tech areas.

If in the first years of his reign Park acted relatively mildly, from the 1970s his rule became sharply authoritarian. The president declared martial law, dissolved parliament, and arrested most opposition leaders. Any political activity was prohibited, more than 20,000 opponents of the regime were imprisoned, and death sentences were generously imposed. Changes in legislation guaranteed Pak the opportunity to rule virtually for life. And so it happened, but his lifelong reign was short-lived: in 1979, he was shot by the head of his own intelligence service (CIA of the Republic of Korea) during dinner.

Ferdinand Marcos

Country: Philippines
Years in power: 1965-1986
Patron: USA

Like Park Chung-hee, long-time leader of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos was one of the Asian authoritarian leaders on whom Washington relied. Not only to contain communism in the region, but also to stimulate modernization in US allies. However, unlike the ascetic Pak, Marcos was swimming in gold, and the Philippines under him never achieved success comparable to that of Japan, South Korea or Singapore.

A hereditary politician, Marcos came to power in the Philippines by legal means, winning elections in 1965. The constitutional democratic system modeled on the American one quickly ceased to suit Marcos; in 1972 he declared a state of emergency and abolished the constitution. The United States, which was primarily interested in the safety of American military bases in the Philippines, remained silent: Washington thought that a strong dictator was better than a weak democracy.

During his 31 years in power, Marcos went some way to modernizing the lagging Philippine economy, quadrupling the state budget and electrifying the country. At the same time, through complex schemes, Marcos siphoned off nearly $10 billion. Marcos dealt with human rights in his own way: tens of thousands of Filipinos during the years of his rule went through prisons, many were tortured, and about 3,000, according to historians, died.

In 1986, the Marcos regime collapsed: the next elections were rigged, an uprising began, and the army went over to the side of the protesters. The United States took the fall of its protégé as philosophically as its ascension - it maintained partnerships with the new authorities of the Philippines, and the dictator himself was given refuge in Hawaii, where he, forgotten by everyone, died in 1989.

Khorlogin Choibalsan

Country: Mongolia
Years in power: 1936-1952
Cartridge: USSR

Few people in the world have cosplayed the USSR as close to the original as did communist Mongolia, nicknamed the 16th Soviet republic for this. An inconspicuous country between the USSR and China without strategically important resources, Mongolia repeated all the turns of Moscow: socialist revolution, repression, regime softening, stagnation and perestroika followed by regime change. In this paradigm, Marshal Choibolsan was a little Mongolian Stalin.

They began to build communism in Mongolia in 1924, immediately after the death of the sacred Buddhist religious leader of the Mongols, Bogd Gegen VIII. The first leader of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party, Palzhediin Genden, refused to carry out repressions against Buddhists, and therefore Stalin removed Genden, summoned him to Moscow and shot him (not personally). Choibalsan turned out to be more accommodating and quickly rose to the top. Since 1936, his power became absolute.

Choibalsan had his own repressions in 1937, when he massacred the aristocracy, Buddhists and party opponents of the leader (a total of 35-40 thousand victims, a huge figure for sparsely populated Mongolia) and his own cult of personality with statues and the renaming of a mountain in his honor. All this time, Mongolia remained a loyal satellite of the USSR, fighting alongside its Soviet elder brother against Japan and raising a quiet voice on the world stage in support of socialist values.

Like Stalin, Choibalsan died a natural death and the next leader, Yumzhagiin Tsedenbal, who combined the functions of Khrushchev and Brezhnev in Mongolian cosplay, carried out “dechoibalsanization” condemning repressions and excesses. Nowadays, the marshal outside Mongolia is remembered only by students of oriental studies.

Chiang Kai-shek

Country: Republic of China (Taiwan)
Years in power: 1946-1975 (in Taiwan since 1949)
Patron: USA

The story of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, the first person to lead the “alternative” Red PRC, Taiwanese China, is replete with sharp turns. A member of the Nationalist Kuomintang Party and a career military man, in the 1910s-1920s, Chiang Kai-shek fought for the unification of a divided China under the Kuomintang flag and repressed the Communists. Then he had to fight with the communists against the Japanese occupiers in the 1930s-1940s, which was replaced by a civil war in China against the same communists. Chiang Kai-shek lost and, along with other Kuomintang leaders, took refuge in Taiwan from 1949.

For the rest of his life, Chiang cherished the dream of defeating the Reds and returning China to the control of the pro-Western Kuomintang, but the forces were unequal. The United States fully supported Taiwan: until 1971, under their patronage, it was representatives of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime who sat on the UN Security Council representing China. However, even the most radical American politicians did not dare to support the desire to start a new war against mainland China.

Meanwhile, Chiang Kai-shek imposed his own power on Taiwan and did it harshly. As a result of the so-called “February 28 Incident” in 1947, 3-4 thousand people were killed: the military shot citizens right on the streets. Until his death, Chiang Kai-shek pursued a policy of “white terror” and exterminated any dissidents, accusing him of having connections with the communists. Like South Korea, Taiwan eventually became an economically successful state and democratized, but only after the death of its dictatorial founder.

Near and Middle East

Hafez Assad

Country: Syria
Years in power: 1970-2000
Cartridge: USSR

Since 1963, Syrian Air Force general and combat pilot Hafez al-Assad has moved step by step towards absolute power, much like Frank Underwood from House of Cards. Only the background was not prosperous Washington, but seething Damascus. In 1963, the military, among them Assad, organized a coup that brought the previously banned Arab Socialist Revival Party (Baath Party) to power. Three years later, in 1966, the radical wing of the Baathists overthrew the more moderate older generation, and Assad was again among the winners, becoming the right hand of Salah Jadid, who led the country. In 1970, in the third coup in ten years, Assad overthrew Jadid, leaving him alone at the top.

Assad Sr. did not have to be bored: he fought with Israel, trying to reconquer previously lost lands (unsuccessfully), in 1976 he invaded neighboring Lebanon during the civil war and occupied part of its territory, and within the state he concentrated all power in his own hands. All key positions were occupied by either representatives of the Assad clan or their fellow Alawites, who constituted a minority of the Syrian population.

Over time, it is the concentration of influence and wealth in the hands of a minority that will lead Syria to a terrible social explosion. Hafez al-Assad himself faced armed resistance to his regime when an Islamist uprising broke out in the north of the country in the city of Hama in 1982. Then Assad brutally suppressed him. According to various sources, from 10 to 25 thousand people died, mostly civilians. Thirty years later, far fewer casualties in clashes between police and protesters would be enough to start a civil war.

Assad Sr., like many other dictators, was saved by the Cold War: after Egypt went over to the US side, Assad’s Syria remained the main ally of the USSR in the Middle East. Hafez met with Brezhnev more than once, the Soviets supplied weapons to Syria and supported him at UN meetings. However, the Assad regime was not so fragile as to collapse along with the USSR: despite the economic crises, Hafez ruled safely for almost 30 years and died in 2000, effectively handing over the presidency to his son Bashar, for whom things have not been going well since about 2011 - but that's a completely different story.

Saddam Hussein

Country: Iraq
Years in power: 1979-2003
Cartridge: USSR

Saddam Hussein's brutal end - the US-led coalition invaded Iraq on dubious grounds, the country was occupied, and the former dictator was captured, executed and ridiculed in South Park - inspires sympathy for the Iraqi ruler and surrounds him with an almost martyr's aura. But let's be realistic: before his fall, Saddam was an egomaniac dictator destructive to his country.

Having come to power in the late 1970s, Hussein took full advantage of the consequences of the oil boom: revenues from the sale of hydrocarbons helped him seriously develop the social sphere and infrastructure. Saddam's popularity grew and became a cult of personality; Portraits of the smiling, mustachioed leader hung throughout Iraq. One of the Soviet diplomats even noted that in terms of the number of images of the leader, Baghdad surpasses both Damascus and Pyongyang.

Saddam's ambitions did not find a way out in the peaceful sphere: in 1980 he started a war with neighboring Iran, which lasted 8 years and became one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 20th century. Iraq was supplied with weapons and provided financial assistance by both the USSR (Saddam was considered a pro-Soviet leader) and the USA (for which Iran, where the Islamic revolution was victorious, was a great evil). The war ended in nothing: the parties maintained the status quo. Between 500 and 600 thousand people died, including at least 20 thousand civilians.

Having ended the war in a draw but declaring a great victory, Saddam decided to restore the faltering economy with another gamble: in 1990, Iraq occupied weak and oil-rich Kuwait, which led to Western outrage and the outbreak of the Gulf War of 1990-1991. Saddam hoped that the Soviet allies would not allow a strike, but he cruelly miscalculated. Times had changed, and Moscow was no longer in the mood to help Iraq. The UN coalition forces led by the United States attacked Saddam and not only drove him out of Kuwait, but also defeated the Iraqi army.

Even before the Gulf War, Saddam managed to carry out Operation Anfal against the Iraqi Kurds, which essentially became the genocide of this people (at least 50,000 Kurds died), and then brutally suppress the uprisings of those Iraqis who hoped for regime change after defeat in the war. In total, according to the most conservative estimates, at least 250,000 Iraqi civilians died during the Saddam era. However, the American invasion of 2003, as a result of which Hussein found himself on the scaffold and Iraq on the brink of destruction, also did not bring peace to this unfortunate country.

Concept of military dictatorship

Definition 1

A military dictatorship is a form of government in which the military has full power, usually seizing power as a result of a coup in the state.

It is similar, but not identical, to stratocracy, in which military forces manage state affairs. Like any dictatorship, a military dictatorship can be official or unofficial; certain military dictators (Manuel Noriega in Panama) are nominally subordinate to the civilian government, regardless of the power structure of the regime, and depending on this factor can be classified as a form of stratocracy. There are also mixed types of forms of government, in which the military sets the most powerful influence, but does not carry out control measures in a given situation in an autocratic manner.

Types of military dictatorship, emergence and evolution

One of the reasons for this seems to be that the military has the highest level of cohesion and the best organizational structure in comparison with civilian institutions of society, which is characteristic of developing states that are prone to coups in the state.

The typical military dictatorship of Latin America is traditionally represented by a Junta (from Spanish, translated as "council", "conference") - a committee that consists of several officers, usually from the top leadership of the armed forces, although not in every case. This is evidenced by the terminology “power of colonels”, which says that military leaders remain loyal to the previous regime.

This was the case with General Jorge Rafael Videla, whose reign in Argentina after the 1976 coup was characterized by the use of force and extra-legal measures, which the military called a “process of national reorganization.” Something similar happened in El Salvador during the civil war in 1980, as death squads killed approximately four thousand dissidents (about 0.8% of the population) to undermine opposition activity.

In the Chilean state, the situation with General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, who was in power from 1973 to 1990, developed in a slightly different way: he began as chairman of the board, and later consolidated power around himself, remained in this post until the end of his reign, becoming a senator for life sentence during the transition of the state to a regime of democracy. Similar is the case with Desi Bouterse in Suriname.

Other military dictatorships were concentrated entirely in the hands of a single official, the caudillo, traditionally the commander-in-chief of the army. This happened with Bolivia, which was ruled by General Hugo Banzer from 1971 to 1978. In Paraguay, the military dictator was General Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled this state for thirty-five years, from 1954 to 1989. The next military dictator, Anastasio Somoza Garcia, ruled Nicaragua from 1936 to 1956, forming a family dynasty that was at the origins of power in the state until 1979. In any case, the chairman of the Junta or the commander himself often takes office in the guise of the head of state.

In Africa and the Middle East, military governments are usually headed by a single powerful ruler, being authoritarian regimes in addition to military dictatorships. Leaders like Sani Abacha and Idi Amin worked to form a cult of personality and became the faces of nations inside and outside their own states. Moreover, it is necessary to note the military coup in Thailand. It was carried out by a group of military men who retained the monarchy as their form of government. Most military dictatorships are formed after the occurrence of a coup d'etat, during which the previous government is abolished. A completely different picture was observed in the case of the modes:

• Saddam Hussein in Iraq;
• Kim Il Sung in North Korea.

These two regimes were initially positioned in the form of states with a one-party system of government, but in the course of their life they were transformed into military dictatorships when their leading figures put on uniforms and the military began to actively participate in government decisions.

On the other hand, various military dictatorships have the ability to gradually restore elements of civil government, while executive power is still concentrated in the hands of the supreme military commander. In Pakistan, the governing generals Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (1977-1988) and Pervez Musharraf (1999-2008) each held a single referendum in their time to assume the post of President of Pakistan, which was contrary to the constitution.

In past periods, military juntas justified their own power in the form of ensuring political stability in the state or saving it from the threat of “dangerous ideologies.”

Example 1

For example, in Latin America, the threat of communism was most often used as a justification for the emerging regime, and the largest part of military dictators were trained at the School of the Americas, an institution that ensured the loyalty of pro-American troops in relation to US foreign policy in the context of the Cold War.

Since the 1990s, military dictatorships have become less and less common. The reason for this was the following facts:

• military dictatorships lost international legitimacy because there were so-called “waves of democratization”;
• most of the military have had unsuccessful experiences in government;
• The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union led to difficult situations for military dictatorships to justify their actions as the threat of communism was eliminated.

Given these facts, multiple nations are currently not inclined to take part in disputes of a political nature.

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• Substituted (MP3 audiobook on 2 CDs), Alexey Kalugin. The main character, as a result of a certain set of circumstances, finds himself in the service of an organization called Status. The hero must temporarily replace one of the Status agents working for... audiobook

The directory includes information about the circumstances of the death of world leaders of the XX-XXI centuries - monarchs, presidents and prime ministers who died violent deaths in the line of duty. According to Vlast's calculations, from 1900 to 2006, a total of 94 figures in senior government positions in different countries were assassinated, died in accidents, or committed suicide. The reference book describes 60 of the most meaningful stories. Thirty-four cases are omitted, mostly involving African and Middle Eastern heads of state. The reference book does not include cases of violent deaths of heads of self-proclaimed states - only stories about the fate of leaders of countries recognized by the international community or a significant part of it are included. As appendices, information is given about some rulers who died under mysterious circumstances or were killed after losing their powers.
Compiled by Dmitry Polonsky
The author is grateful in advance for any clarifications that can be sent by email to: vlast@site.

July 29, 1900 gunned down King of Italy Umberto I. He became the last autocrat to die a violent death in the 19th century. During the reign of Umberto I, Italy suffered enormous human and economic losses in the colonial wars in Somalia and Ethiopia and a debilitating customs war with France, and a crop failure in 1898 forced Italian peasants to starve. An attempt by peasants who arrived in Milan from all over the country to present a petition to the monarch asking for help grew into a demonstration, which, with the sanction of Umberto I, ended with the shooting of the protesters. Having learned about the shooting of demonstrators and the king’s awarding of the general responsible for it, an Italian emigrant of anarchist convictions, Gaetano Bresci, who lived in the United States, decided to kill the monarch. By deceitfully obtaining $150 for travel from the newspaper Social Question, where he worked, Breschi arrived in Italy. During Umberto I's trip to the city of Monza, an anarchist in the crowd approached the king and fired three bullets at point-blank range. The 56-year-old monarch died on the spot. Bresci was sentenced to life in hard labor in the Santo Stefano prison on the island of Ventotene, where he died less than a year later. According to the prison administration, it was suicide.
September 14, 1901 died from a serious wound US President William McKinley. His foreign policy was distinguished by active expansion and the struggle for the former Spanish colonies: a US protectorate was established in Cuba, and a government-general headed by an American official was introduced in the Philippines. Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto Rico were involved in the US sphere of influence. According to historians, it was under McKinley that the United States became a world power, and his reign is characterized as the beginning of “new imperialism.” This aroused hatred of the president among anarchists, to whom his killer Leon Czolgosz, a Pole born in the USA, belonged. On September 6, 1901, McKinley arrived at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, to perform at the Temple of Music pavilion. There were about 80 guards inside and outside the pavilion. Czolgosz managed to hide the .32-caliber revolver under a bandage that simulated a fracture of his right arm. After standing in line for many hours, he entered the hall with the crowd. To the sounds of a Bach sonata, the president came out to the public and began shaking hands with his followers. Being left-handed, McKinley extended his left hand to Czolgosz, the terrorist raised his right hand and fired twice from under the bandage. The first bullet hit McKinley in the chest, the second pierced the stomach. Czolgosz was captured on the spot and severely beaten. When arrested, he stated that as an anarchist he was “simply doing his duty.” The President was transported to the exhibition hospital, where an emergency operation had to be performed by a gynecologist who was unable to remove the bullet from the abdominal cavity. Five days later, McKinley's condition deteriorated sharply, and two days later he died of gangrene. The trial of Czolgosz took place in the same month and lasted 8 hours and 25 minutes. In his last words, the terrorist said: “I killed the President because he was the enemy of all good working people. I do not regret my crime.” On October 29, 1901, Leon Czolgosz was executed in the electric chair. The execution was turned into torture, periodically changing the tension. The coffin containing Czolgosz's remains was then covered with quicklime and destroyed within 12 hours.
30 May 1903 killed by a group of conspiratorial officers King of Serbia Alexander I Obrenovic. During his reign, the constitution was abolished, parliament was dissolved, and opposition speeches were banned. The dissatisfaction of government circles and senior officers intensified after the marriage of King Alexander to a lady of dubious reputation, Dragoy Mashin, who brought numerous relatives closer to the court. The immediate reason for the officers' conspiracy was the king's demand to them to recognize his brother-in-law Nikodim Lunievits as heir to the throne. On the night of June 30, conspirators led by the captain of the Serbian General Staff, Dragutin Dimitrijevic, nicknamed Apis (Bull), broke into the Obrenovic chambers in the Belgrade palace and demanded that the king abdicate the throne in favor of the head of the ancient dynasty of Serbian princes, Petr Karadjordjevic. After the refusal of the king, who wounded Dimitrievich and shot one of the conspirators, the attackers opened fire with revolvers, then sabers were used. Later, 6 bullet wounds and 40 marks of saber blows were counted on the king’s body, and two wounds, 63 saber blows and numerous heel marks on the queen’s body. The queen's brothers Nicodemus and Nikola were also killed. The corpses of the king and queen were thrown out of the windows onto the palace square, where they lay for more than a day while public festivities took place in Belgrade. The Obrenovich dynasty ceased to exist, and the Karageorgievic dynasty came to power. Dimitrievich, in whose body three bullets fired by the king remained until the end of his life, rose to the rank of colonel and the position of chief of military intelligence. For organizing the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in June 1914, which became the reason for the First World War, Dimitrievich was shot on July 27, 1917 on charges of treason against Serbia.
February 1, 1908 gunned down King Carlos I of Portugal. Having suppressed republican uprisings in the army in 1902 and in the navy in 1906, Carlos I appointed General João Franco as prime minister, effectively giving him the powers of a military dictator. At Franco's insistence, in 1907 the king authorized the dissolution of parliament. On the day of his death, Carlos I and his family left the Lisbon residence in Terreiro do Paço in an open carriage, heading to a winter resort in the province of Vila Viçosa. In the crowd of mourners were two armed anarchists: office worker Alfredo Costa and schoolteacher Manuel Buisa. Approaching the carriage, Costa shot the monarch at point-blank range with a revolver, and Buisa, snatching a gun from under his cloak, shot Crown Prince Louis Philippe in the face. Both anarchists were killed on the spot: Costa was trampled by the crowd, and Buisa was hacked to death by a guard officer. After the death of Carlos I and the Infante, Franco resigned. The youngest son of the deceased king, Manuel II, was proclaimed monarch. He became the last Portuguese autocrat: on the night of October 5, 1910, when Lisbon was engulfed in revolution, Manuel fled to Great Britain, where he died without leaving any offspring.
September 18, 1911 Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Russia Pyotr Stolypin. Four days before his death, Stolypin attended the play “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” at the Kiev Opera House. Emperor Nicholas II and his family and many courtiers came to the premiere. There were reinforced police squads on Theater Square and the surrounding streets, and police officials at the outer doors of the theater. According to the memoirs of the Kyiv governor Alexei Girs, on the eve of the performance, the head of the city security department, Nikolai Kulyabko, informed him that “at night a woman arrived in Kiev, who was entrusted by the military squad with carrying out a terrorist act in Kyiv; the target, apparently, was the chairman of the Council of Ministers, but not an attempt at regicide is also excluded." Stolypin was warned about a possible assassination attempt, and Kulyabko promised the governor that “he will always keep his agent-informant, who knows the terrorist by sight, close to the sovereign and ministers.” During the intermission before the start of the second act, this agent, Kyiv secret police informant Dmitry Bogrov (later referred to in the investigation materials as Mordko Gershovich Bogrov), approached Stolypin, who was sitting in the front row, and fired two shots from a Browning at point-blank range. The bullet with intersecting cuts acted as an explosive. According to the memoirs of the governor of Kiev, Stolypin “was saved from instant death by the cross of St. Vladimir, which was hit by a bullet and, shattering it, changed its direct direction to the heart. This bullet pierced the chest, pleura, thoraco-abdominal barrier and liver. Another bullet pierced the hand through left hand." No political organization claimed responsibility for the murder, but most researchers were inclined to believe that Bogrov acted on instructions from the Social Revolutionaries. Later, Bogrov’s brother Vladimir, in his book, argued that Stolypin’s killer acted as a lone terrorist, deciding to take revenge on the head of government for the fact that “punitive expeditions drenched the entire country in workers’ and peasants’ blood.” The Senate commission that investigated the circumstances of the assassination did not come to a single version regarding the motives for the murder. According to the verdict of the military district court, Bogrov was hanged on the night of September 25, 1911.
March 18, 1913 in the city of Thessaloniki, shortly before recaptured by Greek troops during the war against the Ottoman Empire, shot dead King George I of Greece. The king was taking a traditional walk through the city center. The killer, the Greek Alexander Schinas, was waiting for him at the corner of Agestrias and Dacampagne streets, a few steps from the police commissariat. Approaching the king, from a distance of two steps, he fired a single shot from a large-caliber revolver. The equestrian who accompanied the king managed to detain the killer. 67-year-old George I died on the way to the clinic. The terrorist refused to answer police questions and said that he would talk about his motives in court. During a search, Schinas was found to have a letter in which he declared himself an anarchist and communicated his desire to kill the King of Greece and commit suicide. On the morning of March 23, Schinas was transported from prison to the investigator’s cell, where his hand shackles were removed. Having managed to distract the warden, he broke the window and threw himself down from a height of 10 m. After the death of Schinas, the investigation was unable to establish those who ordered the murder of the monarch.
May 21, 1920 killed Mexican President Venustiano Carranza de la Garza. In the spring of 1920, a former supporter of the president, General Alvaro Obregon, launched an armed uprising. Carranza fled from the capital to Veracruz by train, seizing the state treasury, but Obregon's troops cut the road and attacked the train. With several supporters, Carranza fled on horseback into the mountains and found refuge in a village near the city of Tlaxcalantongo. On the night of May 21, he was shot in his sleep. Carranza's killers have not been identified. According to one version, his own people shot him, realizing that the 60-year-old president, who had lost his treasury, was no longer capable of organizing armed resistance. According to another version, the president was killed by the head of the village commune, Rodolfo Herrero, who hoped to curry favor with Obregon. But after seizing power, Obregón put Herrero on trial, where he was acquitted.
December 16, 1922 shot first President of Poland Gabriel Jozef Narutowicz. Before the introduction of the presidency, the head of the executive branch of Poland, according to the constitution of 1919, was the “chief of state,” who was assigned the role of “the chief executor of the decisions of the Sejm in civil and military affairs.” This post was held by the commander-in-chief of the country's armed forces, Jozef Pilsudski. The new constitution, adopted in March 1921, introduced the institution of the presidency instead of the “chief of state.” But due to the “Transitional Law” adopted in May of the same year, the post of chief lasted until December 14, 1922. On December 9, 1922, the Sejm elected Narutowicz as president on the fifth attempt. This was opposed by the National Democratic Party (Endeks), whose members declared Narutowicz the “president of the Jews” and a “freemason.” On December 14, Piłsudski transferred power to the elected president. On December 16, Narutowicz visited an exhibition at the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw. There, the 57-year-old president was shot dead with three shots from a revolver by the artist Eligiusz Niewiadomski. On December 30, the killer was sentenced to death and a month later he was shot in the Warsaw Citadel prison.
May 7, 193O died from bullet wounds French President Paul Doumer. The popular 75-year-old president, who lost four sons in World War I, served in office for less than a year. The killer was 39-year-old emigrant from Russia Pavel Gorgulov, a writer. Under the pseudonym Pavel Brad, he published a collection of poems in Paris, “The Secret of the Life of the Scythians.” He also wrote novels about the life of the Cossacks, most of which were rejected by publishers. In poetry and prose, Gorgulov propagated the idea of ​​“Scythianism,” according to which Russia, as the center of spirituality, must defeat the West. On May 6, 1932, Gorgulov, with an invitation card in the name of “veteran writer Paul Breda,” went to the book fair, which was opened by the president. He shot Doumer several times at close range with a revolver and was detained on the spot, shouting a slogan from his collection “The Secret of the Life of the Scythians”: “The violet will defeat the machine!” The unconscious Doumer was taken to the hospital, where during the operation he came to his senses and asked: “What happened to me?” - “You were in a car accident.” “Wow, I didn’t notice anything,” said Doumer, fell into oblivion again and died at 4 o’clock in the morning on May 7. During interrogation, his killer stated that the president’s death corresponded to the ideals of white emigration, and reported belonging to the “green fascist party.” However, both Russian emigrants and fascists represented by Mussolini dissociated themselves from Gorgulov. The version about the involvement of the OGPU in the assassination attempt has not been confirmed. The trial took place at the end of July 1932. Lawyers insisted on Gorgulov’s insanity, but the prosecutor said: “The impression of a madman made by the accused is explained by his nationality.” After hearing the death sentence, Gorgulov tore his shirt collar shouting: “France refused me a residence permit!” On September 14, 1932 he was executed by guillotine. On the way to the scaffold, Gorgulov sang “Hostile whirlwinds are blowing over us,” and his last words were: “Russia, my country!”
December 29, 1933 gunned down Prime Minister of Romania Ion Gheorghe Duca. The reason for the murder was the Prime Minister’s ban on participation in parliamentary and local elections of the nationalist party “Legion of the Archangel Michael”. Three terrorists from the military wing of the “legion” - the Iron Guard - shot Dooku with revolvers on the platform of the railway station in the resort town of Sinaia. Immediately after the murder, the militants surrendered to the police. Romanian nationalists still honor the killers of Ion Duca under the common name Nicadori, made up of syllables of their names. The court sentenced the attackers to life imprisonment, but acquitted the leader of the Iron Guard, Corneliu Codreanu, who was accused of conspiracy. Five years after the murder of Duca, when the political popularity of Codreanu, who was actively supported by Hitler, began to pose a real threat to the power of King Carol II of Romania, the leader of the Iron Guard was arrested again. On November 30, 1938, he, three Nicadoris and ten other Guard militants were shot without trial by the police in a forest near Bucharest. Authorities said the terrorists were killed while trying to escape.
July 25, 1934 died from a gunshot wound Chancellor of Austria Engelbert Dollfuss. He was an active opponent of the annexation of Austria to Germany (Anschluss), which Hitler insisted on. In foreign policy, Dollfuss focused on Italy, and the Italian dictator Mussolini was his personal friend. On July 25, 1934, an attempt at a fascist putsch initiated by Hitler took place in Vienna. A detachment of 150 SS members dressed in Austrian military uniform, including the future head of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) Ernst Kaltenbrunner and the future chief of the RSHA military department Otto Skorzeny, burst into the federal office of the head of government. In the shootout, Dolfuss was wounded in the throat. The attackers prevented staff from providing medical assistance to Dolphus and left him bleeding on the sofa. The head of the Austrian Ministry of Justice, Kurt von Schuschnigg, managed to mobilize government troops and drive the SS detachment out of the office, but most of the putschists were able to escape. Mussolini, in accordance with the mutual assistance agreement with Austria, hastily sent four divisions to the Italian-Austrian border. Hitler had to abandon plans for an immediate Anschluss. On July 28, 1934, Mussolini said on the radio that Hitler “cynically trampled upon the elementary laws of decency.” So the murder of the Chancellor of Austria became the cause of the conflict between Hitler and Mussolini for several years. Dollfuss's successor as Federal Chancellor, von Schuschnigg, did not find Mussolini's support, and in March 1938 Austria became part of the Third Reich.
October 9, 1934 gunned down King of Yugoslavia Alexander I Karageorgievich. After a series of terrorist attacks organized by Croat separatists, the king dissolved parliament in January 1929 and banned the activities of all parties based on religious, regional or ethnic principles. But the leading positions in the state were occupied by the Serbs. The leader of the Croatian nationalists, Ante Pavelić, and his associates fled to Italy and Hungary, forming the “Insurgent Croatian Revolutionary Organization” (in short, “Ustasha”, i.e. rebels). The radicals did the same, uniting into the “Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization” (IMRO) under the leadership of Ivan Mikhailov, which found refuge in Bulgaria. The Constitution of Yugoslavia, approved by the king in 1931, established a regime unique to Europe: a military-monarchical Orthodox dictatorship. At the same time, in foreign policy, Alexander was guided by France, and the head of the French Foreign Ministry, Jean-Louis Barthou, defended the idea of ​​a defensive bloc against Germany with the participation of France, Yugoslavia and the USSR. On October 9, 1934, Alexander arrived in Marseille on the cruiser Dubrovnik to negotiate a military alliance. Bartu met the king at the port, and both leaders got into a limousine. The car, accompanied by a horse-drawn motorcade, reached Exchange Square when VMRO militant Vlado Chernozemsky (real name Kerin Velichko Georgiev), running out of the crowd, jumped on the step of the car and shot several times at the king and the minister with a pistol. The police opened fire, killing three women and a child in the crowd. Chernozemsky was wounded by two saber blows from a security officer and shot dead by the police. The 45-year-old king was carried to the prefecture building, where he died, having managed to whisper: “Save Yugoslavia!” Bartu, 72, died in hospital hours later. Representatives from many countries arrived at the funeral of Alexander I in Belgrade. On the wreath from Hermann Goering it was written: “To our former heroic enemy with deep sorrow.” The investigation in France found that VMRO worked closely with the Ustasha of Ante Pavelic. French police arrested three Croatian conspirators, who on February 12, 1936 were sentenced to life hard labor, and Pavelic and two other Ustashas were sentenced to death in absentia. But Italy did not extradite Pavelić to France. In the 1950-1960s, historians of the USSR and the GDR argued that the operation to eliminate Alexander I and Barthu, called “Teutonic Sword,” was organized by the Ustasha and VMRO under the leadership of the intelligence services of the Third Reich. The action was supervised by Hermann Goering, and the main person responsible for Germany was the assistant to the German military attache in Paris, Hans Speidel, who later successfully served in the German army, and in 1957-1963 became the commander-in-chief of NATO ground forces in Central Europe. German historians claimed that agents of the USSR NKVD were behind the murder. The authors of independent studies in recent years, Mitre Stamenov (Sofia, 1993), Kate Brown (Oxford, 2004) and Jovan Kaciaki (Belgrade, 2004), are inclined to the version of historians of the USSR and the GDR.
April 28, 1945 shot head of the government of the Republic of Salo, former dictator (Il Duce) of Italy Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini. After the signing of the act of surrender of the country by King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy on September 3, 1943, Mussolini fled north to Lombardy, controlled by Wehrmacht units. After 20 days in the city of Salo, he proclaimed the creation of the “Italian Social Republic” (Republic of Salo) and formed a government. King Mussolini was accused of defeatism and organizing a coup. On September 28-29, 1943, the Republic of Salo was recognized by Germany, Japan, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovenia. On April 21, 1945, when Anglo-American troops advanced to northern Italy, Wehrmacht units began evacuating, and on April 25, the partisan committee for the national liberation of Northern Italy announced the beginning of an anti-fascist uprising. On the same day, Mussolini ordered the troops of the Republic of Salo to lay down their arms “to avoid unnecessary bloodshed.” Together with his mistress Clara Petacci and a group of associates, Mussolini tried to make his way to the town of Menaggio, from where the road led to neutral Switzerland. On the night of April 27, the fugitives joined a detachment of 200 Wehrmacht troops. Near the village of Musso, the column was stopped by a partisan detachment, whose commander declared that only the Germans would be allowed through. A German lieutenant, putting a soldier's overcoat on Mussolini, hid him in the back of a truck, but when inspecting the car, the partisans recognized the Duce and arrested him. The Allied command received information about Mussolini's arrest, and the secret services of Great Britain and the United States, competing, tried to kidnap him. But from the partisan command - the Freedom Volunteer Corps (VVC) - an order was received to liquidate him. On April 28 at 16.10, a KDS detachment led by Colonel Valerio (Walter Audisio) shot Mussolini and his mistress on the outskirts of the village of Mezzagra. Five bullets were later found in Mussolini's body. The bodies of the Duce, his mistress and six other fascist leaders were transported by the partisans to Milan, where they were hung by their feet from the ceilings of a gas station in Piazza Loreto. With their death, the Salo Republic ceased to exist.
November 13, 1950 killed Chairman of the Venezuelan military junta Carlos Roman Delgado Chalbo Gomez. He came to power in November 1948 as a result of a military coup, overthrowing President Ramulo Gallegos, in whose government he served as Minister of Defense. The junta led by Delgado dissolved the National Congress, abrogated the constitution and outlawed liberal parties. Delgado, 41, was kidnapped and killed under unclear circumstances. It is assumed that he was eliminated by his rival in the military leadership, Perez Geminez, who after the death of Delgado became the de facto head of government, and from December 1952, the president of Venezuela.
July 20, 1951 gunned down King of Jordan Abdullah I (Abdallah bin Hussein). The 69-year-old monarch, the only Arab politician of his generation, was an active supporter of rapprochement with Western countries. He intended to sign a separate peace with Israel, but, angering the leaders of other Arab countries, abandoned this plan. Abdullah opposed the formation of a single Arab state, including Syria, Iraq and Jordan. The king died in Jerusalem at the entrance to the Al-Aqsa Mosque from three bullets in the head and chest fired by Palestinian Mustafa Shakri Asho, a tailor who was part of the underground group "Arab Dynamite". The terrorist, captured by the king's guards, said that he killed Abdullah for betraying national interests. The murderer and his five accomplices, all residents of Jerusalem, were executed.
October 16, 1951 shot first Prime Minister of Pakistan Liaquat Ali Khan. The prime minister, who played a leading role in recognizing Pakistan's independence after the British occupation, has earned the unofficial title of "father of the nation" in society. He achieved an end to the war with India, concluded a treaty with the United States that was beneficial for Pakistan, and established relations with Western countries, while maintaining the support of Islamic leaders within the country. The 55-year-old prime minister was killed with two bullets in the chest at a rally in a park in Rawalpindi. The terrorist, an Afghan by birth, Shaad Akbar, was shot dead on the spot by Ali Khan's guards. After the killer's death, the investigation was unable to identify his motives and accomplices.

January 2, 1955 died from his wounds President of Panama José Antonio Remon Cantera. On January 1, while the 47-year-old president was attending the hippodrome, he was machine-gunned by an unknown assailant. The murder weapon was not found. To assist in the investigation, the authorities invited US FBI specialists, who discovered that the Panamanians made many gross mistakes during the investigation and did not even fingerprint the sniper’s hideout. First, US citizen Martin Lipstein was accused of murder, who was identified by several witnesses. But then lawyer Ruben Miro confessed to the crime, identifying himself as the executor of the conspiracy, behind which stood the vice-president of the country and the successor of the murdered man, Jose Ramon Guisado Valdez. Lipstein was released, left Panama and soon died in the United States from a gangster's bullet. In April 1955, Guisado was put on trial and then imprisoned, but the investigation established that Miro had lied to both himself and Guisado. In December 1957, Guisado was released, but never returned to the leadership of Panama. The murder remained unsolved. Observers linked Remon's death to his successful negotiations with the US administration on increasing the annual rent for using the Panama Canal from $430 thousand to $1.9 million. This, analysts believed, could be the reason for the removal of Remon by order of American businessmen and politicians close to them .
July 26, 1957 gunned down President of Guatemala Carlos Castillo Armas. The military junta he led seized power on July 8, 1954 as a result of a military coup prepared by the US CIA, forcing President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman to flee the country. Once in power, Armas created the Committee for the Defense against Communism, which could, without the right of appeal, declare any Guatemalan a communist or communist sympathizer and arrest the suspect for six months. The junta has registered over 70 thousand such persons. Under Armas, the capital of Guatemala became a center for the legalization of criminal proceeds: a casino was built, the co-owners of which were senior junta officers and American gangsters. In July 1957, Armas closed the casino, according to one version, under pressure from the US administration. On July 26, the dictator was killed several times in the chest by palace guard Romeo Valdez Sanchez. After the murder, Sanchez shot himself. Armas' successors did not investigate. The media and historians named both Armas' opponents in the junta leadership and pro-communist supporters of the ousted President Arbenz Guzmán as the masterminds of the murder.
July 14, 1958 the last one was killed during the Republican Revolution Monarch of Iraq Faisal II. After Egypt and Syria agreed to create a United Arab Republic in February 1958, the Iraqi and Jordanian monarchs decided to create an alternative entity: the Arab Federation of Iraq and Jordan, led by 23-year-old Faisal, as the senior member of the Hashemite dynasty. His reign in his new capacity lasted five months. When Faisal, fearing a threat from Syria, requested military assistance from Jordan, his army general Abdel Kerim Qassem used military maneuvers to stage a coup. Qasem's units entered Baghdad and stormed the king's residence. Faisal and Crown Prince Abdul were killed. Prime Minister Nuri al-Said tried to hide in a woman's dress, but was discovered and killed a day later. Qassem, having proclaimed Iraq a republic, headed the new government.
September 26, 1959 died from his wounds Prime Minister of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), leader of the Freedom Party Solomon Bandaranaike. Having come to power in 1956, he deprived English and Tamil of the status of state languages, proclaiming Sinhala as the only official language of the country under the slogan “One nation, one language.” However, in 1958, the prime minister compromised with the Tamil minority, expanding its rights: he supported a law that allowed partial recognition of the Tamil language in commerce. This has angered extremists among the ethnic Sinhalese who make up the majority of the population. The assassination attempt, which took place on September 25, was carried out by a Sinhalese Buddhist monk, Talduve Somarama, who, as a clergyman, could enter the prime minister’s residence without a search. The monk, who was concealing a revolver under his clothes, shot 60-year-old Bandaranaike several times at point-blank range before being captured by security. The prime minister managed to demand that the terrorist not be sentenced to death, but after his death the judges unanimously approved the death sentence. Somarama, who converted to Christianity in prison, was hanged. The widow of Prime Minister Sirimavo, after his death, headed the Freedom Party, and in 1960 - the government of the country, becoming the world's first female prime minister.
August 29, 1960 killed Prime Minister of Jordan Hazza al-Majali. A supporter of Jordan's foreign policy rapprochement with the United States and Great Britain, he was killed when a time bomb planted in his desk exploded. Ten people from his entourage also became victims of the explosion. The Jordanian authorities accused four Palestinian Arabs of the assassination attempt. The investigation considered that they were carrying out the order of the head of the Syrian intelligence services, Abd al-Hamid al-Sarraj, with the participation of the Egyptian intelligence services. According to analysts, the conspirators expected that the murder of al-Majali would provoke an uprising in Jordan against the country's king, Hussein. But the uprising did not occur, and the king, having received the investigation data, in September 1960 moved troops to the border with Syria and prepared to launch an invasion. Hussein was persuaded to abandon these plans by American-British pressure. On December 31, 1960, the accused in the bombing case were publicly hanged in Amman.
May 30, 1961 gunned down President of the Dominican Republic, Generalissimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina. Since 1930, when Trujillo removed President Horacio Vázquez, with a four-year break, he periodically was either the official or the de facto head of the country. Trujillo managed to attract foreign capital to the republic, but established a dictatorial regime. He was officially titled as "honorary president, benefactor of the nation and creator of an independent economy." Towards the end of his reign, Trujillo tried to organize a coup, which spoiled relations with the United States and most Latin American leaders and caused discontent in his army. His car was shot up near San Cristobal. According to the official version, the assassination attempt was organized by General Juan Tomas Diaz, who was soon killed in a shootout with the police. However, according to another version, repeatedly voiced in the media and political detectives, Trujillo was killed during an operation by US intelligence services.
November 2, 1963 killed President of South Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem. A Vietnamese nationalist and anti-communist, he came to power in 1955 with US support. A Catholic by upbringing, Diem was actively involved in the propagation of Catholicism. This caused massive public protests organized by Buddhist leaders. Along with this, partisans supported by the pro-communist authorities of North Vietnam were active in the country. In May 1963, protests and guerrilla activity reached such a scale that the US leadership considered Diem's ​​regime ineffective and stopped its financial support. In 1981, former CIA planning director William Colby admitted that preparations for Diem's ​​removal were authorized by US President John Kennedy. The military coup was led by Vietnamese Army General Dieng Van Minh, who maintained active contacts with the US Ambassador. All senior military officers loyal to Diem were isolated or killed a day before his death. On November 2, upon returning from an evening church service, the 62-year-old president was captured by the Ming putschists, transported to the basement of the army general headquarters and shot in the back of the head. Along with Diem, his younger brother and chief political adviser Ngo Dinh Nu was shot. The coup caused chaos in the military leadership of South Vietnam, which was unable to cope with the guerrillas. In August 1964, the United States began hostilities against North Vietnam, which escalated into a war that lasted until 1975 and led to the elimination of South Vietnam as a state.
November 22, 1963 gunned down US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Kennedy, 46, was killed by a sniper at 12:30 p.m. while driving through Dealey Plaza in Dallas in an open car. The alleged killer, 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested an hour and a half later. On November 24, he was shot and killed by businessman and former gangster Jack Ruby in the Dallas Police Department building, motivated by a desire to take revenge on the killer. Therefore, the only accused did not appear in court and did not have time to give detailed testimony. This gave rise to many versions of the murder, set out in dozens of books and films, from a KGB action to a US intelligence conspiracy. The official version, announced in September 1964, is based on the report of a commission chaired by Chief Justice Ergie Warren and claims that Oswald was a lone killer. A special congressional commission that conducted a new investigation in 1976-1979 concluded that Oswald acted “probably as a result of a conspiracy,” but was unable to identify those responsible. Many independent researchers believe that there was another shooter in addition to Oswald. By decision of the US Congress, all documents in the murder case must be made public by 2017, but, according to the will of the widow of the President, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, her 500-page testimony will not be released until 2044.
January 27, 1965 gunned down Iranian Prime Minister Hassan al-Mansour. As a pro-Western politician, he was appointed by the Shah of Iran under direct pressure from US President Lyndon Johnson. His reign was accompanied by the suppression of the Shiite radical movement. When, at an audience with the Shah and the Prime Minister, the spiritual leader of the Shiites, Ayatollah Khomeini, refused to stop criticizing the regime, Mansour slapped him in the face. Khomeini was then placed under house arrest and expelled from Iran. Deciding to take revenge for the insult and repression against their leader, members of the organization “Fedayan Islam” (“Sacrificing themselves for Islam”) Bokharay, Harandi and Niknejad shot 32-year-old Mansour almost point-blank in Tehran on Bokharestan Square. The killers were captured and executed along with 10 organizers of the attack.
September 6, 1966 stabbed to death Prime Minister of South Africa Hendrik France Verwoerd. The 64-year-old politician, considered the “architect of the apartheid regime,” was killed in the State Assembly building by a parliamentary courier, mulatto Dimitrio Tsafendas. The 48-year-old killer escaped the death penalty because he was declared insane: he claimed that a large worm that had settled in his stomach ordered him to kill the head of government. In 1999, Tsafendas died in a psychiatric clinic.
November 28, 1971 killed Prime Minister of Jordan Wasfi Tell (al-Tal). In September 1970, Tell became one of those responsible for the liquidation of Palestinian partisan bases in Jordan. The PLO under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, relying on thousands of Palestinian refugees who settled in Jordan after the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, tried to use this territory as a springboard for armed attacks on Israel. Over the course of three years, the PLO effectively created Palestinian autonomy in Jordan, and its leadership tried to take control of the local oil business and call on Jordanians for civil disobedience. During September 17-27, 1970, the 40th brigade of the Jordanian army, with the support of tanks, expelled Palestinian Arabs led by the PLO leadership from the country. Several hundred Palestinians died in the process, and Tell became the target of revenge. On November 28, 1971, the Jordanian prime minister was machine-gunned by four gunmen at the entrance to the Sheraton Hotel in Cairo, where Tell had arrived for an inter-Arab summit. The Jordanian authorities considered the leaders of the Palestinian groups "Detachment 17" and "Black September" Abu Hassan (Ali Hassan Salameh) and Abu Iyad (Salah Khalaf) to be the organizers of the terrorist attack. On January 22, 1979, Abu Hassan, also responsible for terrorist attacks against Israelis, was killed in a car bomb in Beirut. The PLO blamed Israeli intelligence for his death. On January 14, 1991, Abu Iyad, who in the last years of his life was in conflict with the leader of the PLO, was killed by an Arafat militant in Tunisia.
September 11, 1973 died as a result of a military coup President of Chile Salvador Isabelino del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus Allende Gossens. Elected on September 5, 1970 as the candidate of the Popular Unity bloc, which included the Democratic, Socialist and Communist parties, Allende became the first Marxist on the continent to come to power through legal means. The Soviet press called his victory in the elections “a revolutionary blow to imperialism in Latin America.” Allende's government nationalized copper mines and other natural resources, angering businessmen and military allies. In March 1973, the pro-presidential coalition lost the support of Congress, where the opposition majority led by the Christian Democratic Party blocked Allende's economic reforms. On the morning of September 11, 1973, the command of the Chilean fleet began a mutiny. The coup, the first stage of which was the seizure of a television center and the bombing of independent radio stations, was led by Chief of the General Staff Augusto Pinochet. He suggested that Allende and his family and closest associates leave Chile by plane, but the president refused. At 11.00 motorized infantry began the assault on the presidential palace La Moneda. Allende and his supporters were defended by about 70 soldiers and officers. From the besieged palace, the president addressed his fellow citizens on the radio. In a final speech amid gunfire, Allende urged civilians not to take to the streets and “not sacrifice themselves” to protect his life. “I have one thing left to say to the workers: I will not resign. At this crossroads of history, I am ready to pay with my life for the trust of the people,” Allende said, after which the radio went silent. When tanks and aircraft entered the battle on the side of the putschists and the attackers occupied the first floor, Allende ordered his comrades to stop resisting and shot himself with a machine gun with gold inlay, donated by Fidel Castro. The putschists shot the already dead Allende, in whom an autopsy revealed 13 bullets. The death of the Chilean leader was announced a day after the assault. For more than 17 years, until the Pinochet regime ceased to exist, the world adhered to two different versions of Allende’s death. In the USSR, as well as among Allende’s relatives, it was believed that the president was killed by the putschists. On March 5, 1991, the Chilean government released the results of the nine-month work of the truth and reconciliation commission, which came to the unequivocal conclusion that Allende committed suicide.
December 20, 1973 died in an explosion in Madrid Prime Minister of Spain Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco. The bomb was planted where the car of the 70-year-old prime minister, who was considered the successor to the 80-year-old dictator (caudillo) of Spain, Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde, was parked. The explosive device under Blanco's armored limousine was so powerful that the car flew over the Church of St. Francis, where the prime minister had arrived for Mass, and fell on the roof of a two-story building. The killers were not found. The Basque separatist organization ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna - "Basque Country and Freedom") claimed responsibility for the explosion. During Franco's reign in Spain, from 1939, political speeches by separatists were punishable by death, Basques' access to civil service was difficult, and the Basque language was prohibited even in private communication. Blanco's murder was one of ETA's most successful actions. Caudillo, who had to personally lead the government, died two years after the death of Blanco, leaving no successor. In November 1975, King Juan Carlos of Spain was proclaimed head of state. Two years later, the government approved the Statute of Guernica, according to which Basque autonomy was formed in Spain, the equality of the Basque and Spanish languages, and the right of the Basques to their own parliament and government were recognized.
March 25, 1975 gunned down King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia. The killer was his nephew and namesake, 31-year-old Prince Faisal bin Musad. At a reception in honor of a delegation from Kuwait, the prince suddenly pulled out a pistol, shot the 72-year-old king three times in the face and was captured by security. The killer declared that he was carrying out the will of Allah, and was declared mentally ill by the judges. This did not stop the authorities from publicly beheading bin Musad in Riyadh in June 1975.
August 15, 1975 killed first President of Bangladesh, leader of the Bengali national movement Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. He came to power in 1971 during the war of independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan. Contrary to the interests of the top military leadership, Rahman began to form parallel structures of “security troops” personally loyal to him. A group of officers focused on returning Bangladesh to Pakistan's jurisdiction attempted a coup, killing Rahman, his wife and five children. The rebellion was suppressed, but Rahman's successors did not investigate the circumstances of the death of the first president.
March 18, 1977 shot at his residence in Brazzaville President of the Congo, head of the Congolese Labor Party (CPT) Marien Ngouabi. He came to power in 1968 in a coup, overthrowing the regime of Alphonse Massamba-Debe. Ngouabi, who proclaimed Congo a “people's republic” and “the first Marxist-Leninist state in Africa,” is known for active contacts with China and the signing of an economic assistance agreement with the USSR. The assassination of the 38-year-old president was carried out by four militants led by Congolese army captain Barthalamew Kikadidi. Three militants were shot by security guards, but Kikadidi managed to escape. Official radio called the attackers "a group of imperialist suicides." Ngouabi's death prompted a large-scale investigation by the CPT military committee. Dozens of people were repressed. According to the verdict of the tribunal, ex-president Massamba-Deba was executed, whom the authorities considered one of the leaders of the conspirators, despite the lack of direct evidence.
April 27, 1978 killed Afghan President Sardar Mohammad Daoud Khan. He died five years after declaring Afghanistan a republic, deposing his cousin king, Mohammed Zahir Shah. Towards the end of Daoud's reign, USSR-backed figures of the banned People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) became more active in the country, and managed to find supporters in the army. The uprising was provoked by police operations that began on April 24 against the leaders of the PDPA: according to Soviet intelligence, the US Ambassador to Afghanistan insisted on them. PDPA leaders Nur Mohammed Taraki, Hafizullah Amin, Babrak Karmal and others were arrested on charges of violating the constitution. However, before his arrest, Amin, with the help of his son, managed to convey to the military units loyal to the PDPA the order prepared back in March to start the uprising. Government troops were deployed to Kabul, but tank units were on the side of the rebels. By April 26, the army began to come under the leadership of a quickly created military revolutionary council led by Abdul Kadir. By the morning of April 27, a group of rebels, supported by tanks and aircraft, broke the resistance of the guards defending the presidential palace of Arc. During the assault and missile and bomb attack on the palace, Daoud and his family were killed. On the afternoon of April 27, the arrested PDPA leaders were released. The leaders of the military-revolutionary council read out an appeal to the people on the radio about the victory of the April (Saur) Revolution and transferred power in the country to the new governing body of Afghanistan - the Revolutionary Council, headed by Nur Mohammed Taraki.
October 26, 1979 gunned down South Korean President Park Chung Hee. Having come to power in 1961 as the leader of the military junta, he was then re-elected three times to the first post in the country, introducing amendments to the constitution and establishing a dictatorial regime in the country. The killer of the 62-year-old president was his longtime friend, Korean CIA chief Kim Ye-joo. According to official media, during lunch at his residence, Kim started an argument with the chief of the presidential security service and, in the heat of the moment, shot him. When Park tried to intervene, Kim shot him twice. According to the unofficial version, under the influence of alcohol, the Korean leaders quarreled over two girls who accompanied the dinner with singing and dancing. The man's associates arrested Kim, who said he shot the dictator as a patriot because Park had become a threat to democracy. Authorities found no evidence of a conspiracy and considered Kim to have acted as an impulsive loner. In May 1980, the killer was executed.
December 27, 1979 Chairman of the Revolutionary Council of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (RS DRA), Secretary General of the Central Committee of the PDPA Hafizullah Amin was killed. Three months before his death, Amin overthrew his predecessor Nur Muhammad Taraki from his post, and on October 8 ordered his death. The leadership of the USSR considered Amin a usurper. KGB officers assigned to his security service reported to Moscow that Amin, “without security and in violation of diplomatic etiquette,” regularly visited the CIA station at the US Embassy. One of the reports spoke of “Amin’s agreement to allow the deployment of American technical reconnaissance assets in the Afghan provinces bordering the USSR instead of the partially reduced installations in Pakistan and Turkey.” On December 12, Secretary General of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev, KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov, Defense Minister Dmitry Ustinov and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko decided to send Soviet troops into the DRA. This was done in violation of the Constitution of the USSR, in secret from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Central Committee of the CPSU and members of the Politburo. The military action was motivated by the need to protect the “socialist ideals of the April Revolution of 1978”, numerous requests from the previous leadership of the DRA for direct military assistance and demands for the security of the southern borders of the USSR from the United States, which lost its strategic position in Iran after the Islamic revolution that took place there in February 1979. On December 20-22, at the urgent request of Soviet advisers, Amin and his family moved from their residence in the center of Kabul to the less fortified Taj Beg Palace on the western outskirts of the capital. Soon, the special groups of the USSR KGB "Zenit" and "Grom", part of the "A" ("Alpha") unit, arrived in Afghanistan. On the eve of the assault, Hafizullah Amin and members of his family were poisoned with pomegranate juice, to which KGB agents added poison, but the PDPA Secretary General was saved by Soviet doctors who did not know about Moscow’s preparations. By 18.00 on December 27, KGB units surrounded Taj Beg and, together with a battalion from the 40th Army, began to storm it. Outside, the palace was guarded by motorized infantry and tank battalions of the DRA army, numbering 2.5 thousand people. The attackers in armored personnel carriers broke through to the palace, destroyed the security posts and, under heavy fire from the windows, broke into the Taj Beg. Amin, who tried to escape, was killed by a grenade explosion. During the assault, his two sons and a Soviet military doctor assigned to the PDPA General Secretary also died. According to historians, up to 25 soldiers and officers were killed and up to 225 wounded by the attackers. On the night of December 27-28, a new composition of the RS DRA and the government of the country were formed. The posts of chairman of the RS DRA and head of government were taken by the new Secretary General of the PDPA Central Committee, Babrak Karmal. The next day, the USSR and DRA media announced that Amin’s regime had been overthrown by the “patriotic and healthy majority of the PDPA, the Revolutionary Council and the armed forces of the DRA,” and Amin had been shot “by the verdict of the revolutionary court.” For the operation to overthrow Amin, about 400 employees of the USSR KGB were awarded orders and medals. In July 2004, the curator of the operation, who then held the post of head of the First Main Directorate of the KGB (foreign intelligence), Vladimir Kryuchkov, said: “Everything was done correctly. Moreover, I am amazed at the foresight of the then leaders. Gromyko, Ustinov looked far ahead.”
April 12, 1980 hacked to death Liberian President William Richard Tolbert. Historians characterize his reign as an “oligarchy of Americo-Liberians” (descendants of slaves who fled from the USA to Liberia). Tolbert lost public support after he ordered the shooting of demonstrators protesting soaring rice prices in April 1979. However, this did not prevent him from leading the Organization of African Unity from July 1979 until his death. A year after the shooting of demonstrators, Tolbert fell victim to a coup organized by 17 members of his personal guard under the leadership of Sergeant Samuel Doe, 19, who belonged to the Krahn tribe. At night, the putschists broke into Tolbert’s chambers and inflicted 13 saber blows on the 67-year-old president. US historian Elliot Berg characterized the coup this way: “Never before has a group of people so young, so poorly educated, so low in official status, so inexperienced in government, seized political power so absolutely.” Doe, who first headed the "people's salvation council" and then became president of Liberia, physically destroyed many of Tolbert's associates and established an ethnic dictatorship of the Krahn tribe, giving the police the right to arrest anyone for "unhealthy statements about government policies."
May 24, 1981 died in a plane crash President of Ecuador Jaime Roldos Aguilera. The crash of the Air Force plane carrying 40-year-old Roldos and his five companions occurred near the Peruvian border. The plane deviated from its route by several tens of kilometers and crashed into a mountain. Ecuadorian authorities explained this as a pilot error. However, in 2004, businessman John Perkins, close to international economic organizations, released his autobiography, Confessions of an Economic Hitman. It claims that Roldos died as a result of an operation by US intelligence services, as he came into conflict with large US industrialists over the oil resources of Ecuador.
May 30, 1981 killed President and Prime Minister of Bangladesh Zia Ziaur Rahman. After the declaration of Bangladesh's sovereignty in 1971, he was one of the organizers of the national army. Having won the presidential election on April 21, 1978 and leading the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Rahman demoted his longtime associate General Mansur, transferring him from the main military administration to district command. On May 29, 1981, Rahman paid a visit to the city of Chittagong, which is part of this district. On the night of May 30, Mansur rebelled: the residence where Rahman was staying was stormed. The president and eight people around him were shot dead. But the army command did not support Mansur, who was defeated and killed in battles with troops loyal to the government.
July 31, 1981 died in a plane crash the de facto leader of Panama, commander-in-chief of the armed forces Omar Efrain Torrijos Herrera. Torrijos, who came to power in 1968 through a coup, gained popularity because in 1977 he concluded an agreement with US President Jimmy Carter to return the Panama Canal from the control of the US administration. After the plane carrying 52-year-old Torrijos and his five companions crashed in the mountainous region of Cocle province, Panamanian authorities concluded that the accident was caused by pilot error in poor visibility conditions. But immediately after Torrijos’ death, a US military plane was spotted in the area of ​​the crash, and Torrijos’ brother Moses subsequently stated that the Panamanian leader died as a result of a CIA operation. American businessman John Perkins, who is familiar with Torrijos, agrees with him, claiming that “there was a tape recorder with explosives on the plane.” Observers noted that Torrijos died six months after the election of US President Ronald Reagan, who had a sharply negative attitude towards the foreign policy of Jimmy Carter, and found similarities in the circumstances of the death of Torrijos and Ecuadorian President Roldos. But the leadership of Panama and the United States called these arguments political speculation.

October 6, 1981 killed during a military parade in Cairo Egyptian President Mohammed Anwar al-Sadat. Security measures at the parade were the strictest: the police blocked all approaches to the square in advance, even the guests of honor invited to the podium were subject to searches. But three hours after the parade began, one of the vehicles suddenly separated from the column of trucks with 130-millimeter guns and turned towards the podium where Sadat, Egypt's top leadership and guests of honor were present. Senior Lieutenant Khaled Islambouli of the 333rd Artillery Brigade jumped out of the cockpit and threw a grenade at the stand, then opened fire with a heavy machine gun. Islambouli's accomplices threw the other two grenades from the back of the truck. Another conspirator, sniper Hussein Abbas Ali, opened fire at the stand with a machine gun. Panic set in, Sadat rose from his chair and said: “It can’t be!” Standing motionless, Sadat found himself a target for a sniper: bullets pierced his neck and chest, hitting the pulmonary artery. The Egyptian President was killed 20 seconds later. after the start of the attack. The terrorists, making sure that he was not breathing, tried to escape. In addition to Sadat, several senior military officials, a bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church, the president's photographer, and his valet were killed. Egyptian Vice President Hosni Mubarak and several foreign diplomats, including US military advisers, were injured. Three perpetrators of the terrorist attack were captured on the spot, and another three days later. The engineer Mohammed Abdel Salam Farrag, who worked out the details of Sadat's assassination, was also arrested. The investigation revealed that the conspirators were part of the Al-Jihad al-Jadid (New Holy War) organization, headed by Farrag. The group's goal was to carry out the Islamic Revolution, the first act of which was the operation to eliminate Sadat called “Kill the Pharaoh.” On April 15, 1982, Farrag and two civilian conspirators were hanged, and former soldiers Islambouli and Abbas Ali were shot. But the investigation did not establish how, having bypassed careful control, the militants carried weapons and grenades into the truck and why, a few seconds before the terrorist attack, Sadat’s bodyguards left their posts around the podium. According to one version, American intelligence agencies were behind the terrorist attack, and according to another, Egyptian intelligence services. Since Sadat's death, Egypt has been continuously led by his former vice president, Hosni Mubarak.
December 18, 1981 the official ATA news agency reported a sudden suicide head of the Albanian government Mehmet Shehu. The Prime Minister was considered the closest ally of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Albanian Labor Party (APT), Enver Hoxha, under whose leadership he worked for about 25 years. In particular, Nikita Khrushchev claimed in his memoirs that, by order of Hoxha, in 1948 Mehmet Shehu “personally strangled” the main rival of his patron in the struggle for party power, Koçi Dzodze. Western media reported that Shehu’s “suicide” was the result of a conflict within the leadership of the APT, and according to rumors circulating in Moscow in the early 1980s, Enver Hoxha personally shot the prime minister at a government meeting. Less than a year after Shehu's "suicide", in November 1982, Enver Hoxha said that the former prime minister and "a group of conspirators associated with him were trying to destroy the party and people's power." After this, a purge of the party and state apparatus took place in Albania: many people associated with Shehu were executed. In the “historical notes” “Titovites” published in Albania in 1983, Hoxha specified: “Mehmet Shehu was initially recruited as an American intelligence agent by the director of the American technical school in Albania, Harry Fultz, and, on his instructions, went to Spain. After that, after spending three years in "French refugee camps in Suirien, Gurs and Verba, where he was also recruited by the British Intelligence Service, returned to Albania. During the national liberation struggle, he became an agent of the Yugoslav Trotskyists." In March 1985, there was a new official statement from Hoxha that Mehmet Shehu was a “Yugoslav, American and Soviet agent” and therefore was liquidated.
October 31, 1984 killed Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi. The cause of death was Sikh revenge for the liquidation of a separatist base in the state of Punjab. Since the beginning of 1984, extremists under the leadership of religious leader Bhindranwale, who demanded the separation of Punjab from India, brought weapons and ammunition to the building of the main shrine of the Sikhs - the Golden Temple in the city of Amritsar. On June 5, 1984, a day especially revered by religious Sikhs, Gandhi authorized the storming of the Golden Temple, which was destroyed by fire from tank guns. All the leaders of the group, including Bhindranwale, and several hundred peaceful Sikh pilgrims were killed. This caused outrage among India's 18 million Sikh population, but the prime minister, despite warnings, did not dismiss members of this religious-ethnic group from her security detail. On the morning of October 31, Gandhi, getting ready for a television interview, refused to wear a bulletproof vest under her dress, deciding that it made her look fat. Sikh guards Beant Singh and Satwant Singh stood at one of the posts along the path leading from the prime minister's residence to the office. When Indira Gandhi passed by, Beant shot her with a pistol, and Satwant fired a machine gun. Other guards opened fire on the killers: Beant Singh was shot dead on the spot, Satwant Singh was seriously wounded. At the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Indira Gandhi was operated on for four hours, but without regaining consciousness she died at 2.30 pm. 20 bullets were removed from her body. The investigation found that Beant Singh, who served in the prime minister's bodyguard for about ten years, was associated with a group of religious fanatics and involved his namesake Satwant in the conspiracy. But the Indian authorities failed to find out from whom the order for the murder came. After Gandhi's death, Sikhs were massacred in India. In just a few days, more than 3 thousand people died, dozens of Sikh temples were burned. The civil war was stopped only when Gandhi's son Rajiv called on the population on the radio to renounce revenge.
March 1, 1986 died from a fatal wound Prime Minister of Sweden, leader of the Social Democratic Party Olof Palme, one of the most popular politicians in Scandinavia. On February 28, 1986, Palme was shot in the center of Stockholm while returning on foot, without security, with his wife from the cinema. The killer shot Palma in the back with a pistol, piercing his spine, trachea and esophagus. Another shot wounded the prime minister's wife. The press and political circles put forward various versions, from a conspiracy of Swedish right-wing extremists to operations of the CIA and South African intelligence services. Since the beginning of 2006, the Swedish media have been considering the version that the killers mistakenly shot Olof Palme, confusing him with a major drug dealer Sigge Cedergren. The main suspect in the case, Krister Petersson, died in 2004 at the age of 57. Earlier, the prime minister's wife Lisbeth identified him, and the court convicted him. But Petersson appealed this decision, and the Swedish Themis leaned towards his side, deciding that Lisbeth Palme was not objective at the time of identification, since the newspapers managed to describe the main features of the killer. Years later, Petersson made money from newspaper interviews, periodically admitting that it was he who killed the prime minister. According to Swedish law, investigators still working to solve the crime have five years left, after which the case will be archived. For now, the murder is officially considered unsolved.
October 19, 1986 died as a result of a plane crash President of the People's Republic of Mozambique (PRM) Samora Moises Machel. The Tu-134 plane in which Machel was returning from Zambia crashed in South Africa. The plane and crew were contracted by the NRM government from the USSR. While approaching the capital of the NRM, Maputo, the airliner suddenly lost its course, flew into South African airspace and crashed into a mountain in the Mbuzini area, near the town of Komatipoort. Along with Machel, 34 people from his entourage and five members of the Soviet crew died. A tripartite commission consisting of aviation specialists from the NRM, the USSR and South Africa was formed to investigate, but the South African authorities did not allow not only experts, but even their journalists, to the crash site. The commission concluded that the plane was operational, but the crew flew with outdated navigation maps. Another commission created in South Africa concluded that the crash was the fault of the pilots, but the USSR and the NRM did not accept this conclusion. An interpretation of the flight recorders, carried out at an independent expert center in Zurich, showed that the Tu-134 crew received a signal from a false VOR beacon, but failed to respond correctly to it. Later, in his memoirs, a member of the tripartite commission from the USSR, chief designer of the Ministry of Aviation Industry, Leonid Selyakov, noted that “there was sabotage, of course,” but the crew also showed “a disregard for the performance of their official duties,” ignoring the possibility of sabotage. In August 2003, former South African military intelligence agent Hans Louw, serving a 28-year sentence after the fall of the apartheid regime, said that he was a participant in the South African intelligence service operation to eliminate Samora Machel. According to Lowe, a false VOR was installed by the South African intelligence services to replace the call sign of the radio beacon at the flight tracking center in Maputo, which led to the plane colliding with the ground. The former special agent said that the operation was supervised by South African Foreign Minister Roelof Botha, 30 minutes later. after the disaster, he arrived in Mbuzini, and on his orders, a military doctor gave a lethal injection to the still living Machel.
August 17, 1988 died in a plane crash Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Army, de facto head of the country Zia ul-Haq. He was returning to Islamabad on a C-130 Hercules military aircraft from a military base in Bahawalpur, located 400 km from the capital. There were 36 passengers with him, including the ambassador and two US generals. Following ul-Haq's plane was the plane of Pakistani General Aslam Beg. On approach to Islamabad, the Hercules suddenly tilted and went into a steep dive. Losing altitude, the plane, according to eyewitnesses, began to dive and rear, then crashed to the ground. Beg flew around the scene of the disaster and radioed to Islamabad about the death of the 54-year-old leader of the country. The experts' versions differed: the Pakistanis suggested that there could be a container with poisonous gas on board. When the detonator went off, the container opened, the gas hit the pilots, and the plane lost control. US experts found traces of pentaritritol tetranitrate, an explosive often used for sabotage, on the wreckage. The organizers and masterminds of the terrorist attack have not been found.
November 22, 1989 died in the explosion Lebanese President Rene Ani Mouawad. He was an active supporter of ending the civil war between Lebanese Christians and Muslims that had lasted since 1975, which took place amid periodic intervention in the conflict by Israeli, Syrian and Palestinian militants. Muawad owns the words that have become a formula for civil peace: “There can be no country and its dignity without the unity of people, there can be no unity without agreement, there can be no agreement without reconciliation and there can be no reconciliation without forgiveness and compromise.” 17 days after his election as head of state, when Muawad's motorcade was returning to West Beirut after celebrating Lebanese Independence Day, a car bomb exploded along its route. In addition to the 64-year-old president, 23 more people were killed. Experts determined that the bomb contained 250 kg of TNT. The killers were not found, since the investigation could not be carried out due to the armed conflict in the country. But analysts and relatives of Muawad believed that the removal of the president was an action of the Syrian intelligence services.
December 25, 1989 shot during the revolutionary uprising President, Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Socialist Republic of Romania (SRR) Nicolae Ceausescu. The revolution was preceded by religious and ethnic unrest in the Transylvanian city of Timisoara in November 1989. On December 21, Ceausescu tried to speak from the balcony of the party’s Central Committee building in Bucharest, declaring the events in Timisoara the actions of “spy services of foreign states.” But the demonstration gathered in support of the authorities turned into a spontaneous action of the crowd, which began to chant “Down with the tyrant!”, “Down with communism!”, tearing banners, trampling on portraits of Ceausescu and his wife Elena. It was not possible to restore calm in Bucharest, despite the intervention of troops. On the afternoon of December 22, the Ceausescu couple and two guards escaped in the president’s personal helicopter, which landed on the roof of the Central Committee building. Soon after, a riotous crowd broke into the building. Ceausescu made his first stop in Snagov, near his summer residence, 40 km from Bucharest, from where the SRR president unsuccessfully tried by phone to find the security forces who remained loyal to him. The Ceausescu couple then went by helicopter to the city of Targovishte, where the SRR president hoped to find support from the workers. But the helicopter did not reach the city; it had to be abandoned in a field. On a rural road, the Ceausescu couple and their guards seized a private car and, at gunpoint, ordered it to go to Targovishte. There, by the evening of December 22, the Ceausescu spouses were detained, taken to the police station, and then transported to the barracks of the local garrison, where they spent three days. The tribunal meeting took place on December 25 at the Tyagoviste military base. It was organized by generals Victor Stanculescu and Virgil Magureanu, and the prosecutor's office was represented by Ghiku Popa. Ceausescu was sentenced to death for “genocide, resulting in 60 thousand human victims; undermining state power by organizing armed actions against the people; undermining the national economy; attempting to escape from the country using funds stored in foreign banks, totaling more than $1 billion.” . The Ceausescu spouses declared the trial illegal and pleaded not guilty. On the same day, at 14.50, they were shot. Before his death, 72-year-old Nicolae Ceausescu sang “The Internationale”. When the recording of the execution was shown on Romanian television, the announcer said: “The Antichrist was killed on Christmas!”
September 9, 1990 killed Liberian President Samuel Canyon Doe. He came to power as a result of a putsch, established a partnership with the United States and broke off diplomatic relations with the USSR. Having corrected the documents and added a year to himself to meet the 35-year age limit, in October 1985 Doe held elections with many irregularities, after which he became “president-elect.” In December 1989, the uprising of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) began against Doe, who had established a harsh dictatorship. It was led by ex-diplomat Charles Taylor, accused by Doe of embezzling $1 million. By the end of 1990, the NPFL had grown to tens of thousands of fighters and controlled more than 90% of the country. A splinter group led by Yedu Johnson, who called himself "Prince Yormi", fought both the NPFL and Doe's troops. The civil war was accompanied by massive repression, economic chaos, and the impoverishment of the majority of Liberians. Hundreds of thousands were forced to flee the country. In September 1990, Johnson’s troops approached Monrovia, who, under the guise of negotiations, offered Doe a meeting at the UN mission. On it, Doe was captured and, after severe torture - he was castrated and forced to eat his severed ear - killed. The president's death was recorded on videotape, which was broadcast on many television channels. The shot shows "Prince Yormie" sipping beer while holding Doe's second severed ear.
June 29, 1992 gunned down Chairman of the Supreme State Council, head of the Revolutionary Socialist Party of Algeria Mohammed Boudiaf. His reign lasted about six months. During this period, the armed struggle between Islamic radicals and the army and security forces intensified. In March 1992, Boudiaf's government banned the Islamic Front for the Salvation of Algeria (IFS), its leaders were sentenced to long terms, and about 7 thousand Islamists were arrested. On the morning of June 29, when the head of the Supreme State Council spoke in the assembly hall of the House of Culture in the city of Annaba, a member of his personal security, 26-year-old lieutenant Lembarek Bumarafi, came out from behind the curtain on the stage with a machine gun in his hands. He shot 73-year-old Boudiaf, who was sitting a meter away, in the back of the head. In the ensuing shootout, 27 people were wounded. When arrested, the wounded terrorist said: “Boudiaf deserved to die because he was a communist and an enemy of Islam.” The investigation and trial of Boumarafi lasted more than three years. It turned out that he was involved in the Islamic Salvation Army, the military wing of the IFS. In November 1995, Boumarafi was shot in Sherkadu prison.
May 1, 1993 died in the explosion President of Sri Lanka Ranasinghe Premadasa. During his four-year rule, the ethnic armed conflict between the Sinhalese and Tamils ​​escalated in the country. In the north there were militants of the radical Sinhalese nationalist, Marxist Janatha Vimakti Peramana, whom the president managed to suppress. In the jungle in the south, Tamil guerrillas from the separatist movement Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were strengthened, carrying out regular sabotage and terrorist attacks. The Sinhalese Premadasa, who did not want to negotiate with the LTTE, promised the nation to eradicate terrorism, but his own army did not have enough strength to fight the Tamil militants, and Premadasa requested military assistance from India. Since the Indians also failed to cope with the LTTE, and the presence of foreign troops in the country caused Premadasa to lose popularity, the President withdrew the request for help. The Indians left Sri Lanka, but its leader failed to keep his promise to clear the jungles of the Jaffna Peninsula of “tigers.” During the May Day demonstration in Colombo, while Premadasa was walking in a column of his supporters, a suicide bomber on a bicycle suddenly crashed into it. He detonated an explosive device, which killed and injured about 30 people in addition to the 68-year-old president. Authorities blamed the attack on LTTE militants, but no one has claimed responsibility for the blast. After the death of Premadasa, the armed confrontation in the country continued, with more than 55 thousand victims in the next five years.
October 21, 1993 killed President of Burundi Melchior Ngezi Ndadaye. The country's first democratically elected leader, the candidate of the Front for Democracy in Burundi, was a Hutu. In the fall of that year, members of the Tutsi officer corps close to the Unity and National Progress Party rebelled, kidnapped the president and six other cabinet ministers, and then killed them. This provoked an ethnic conflict in the country, which turned into a civil war that lasted until August 2005. According to preliminary UN estimates, the victims of this war were from 250 to 300 thousand.
April 6, 1994 near Kigali airport in Rwanda, a surface-to-air missile shot down a plane carrying Presidents of the neighboring countries Burundi and Rwanda Cyprien Ntaryamira and Juvénal Habiyarimana. Debris fell into territory controlled by Tutsi rebels. In Rwanda, the death of a Hutu president sparked a nationwide chain reaction of revenge. The Rwandan army, consisting of Hutus, launched massive repressions against the Tutsi. On April 7, Hutu soldiers killed their fellow tribesman - Prime Minister of the country Agatha Uwilingiyamane- because of her “moderation”: the pregnant head of government had her stomach ripped open. One of the initiators of the genocide, Jean Kambanda, became prime minister. In a matter of days, all moderate Hutu politicians were slaughtered, including five ministers and the head of the constitutional court. Having dealt with the “traitors” from among their fellow tribesmen, the Hutu extremists began the “final solution” of the national question. State radio announced gatherings of militant groups. The mayors gave them pre-prepared lists, and the Tutsis were systematically slaughtered. A month after the massacre began, the UN created the International War Crimes Tribunal in Rwanda. According to experts, at least 800 thousand became victims of the genocide, including those who died from hunger and disease. Almost a million Rwandans fled to neighboring countries.
November 4, 1995 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was shot and killed. He was killed in the Square of the Kings of Israel in Tel Aviv, when, after a rally held under the slogan “Yes to peace, no to violence,” he was heading to his car. According to investigators, the murder was committed by a lone extremist, a 27-year-old law student at Bar-Ilan University and a member of the ultranationalist organization EYAL (Jewish Combat Organization), Yigal Amir. At 21.50, Amir, according to the official version, approached Rabin and shot him twice in the back with a Beretta pistol, the third bullet wounded the bodyguard. Amir was captured on the spot, and 73-year-old Rabin was transported to Ichilov Hospital, where he died after surgery at 11:30 p.m. At the same time, on the night of the murder, the head of the Israeli Ministry of Health, Ephraim Sneh, and the director of the hospital, Gabi Barabash, announced that Rabin died from a wound in the chest from a bullet fired from the front and shattering his spine. These testimonies were recorded in the medical report, but were not accepted by the investigation and the court. According to one of the unofficial versions, Rabin was killed as a result of a conspiracy by the Israeli secret services: after Amir shot him in the back for the first time, in the ensuing chaos, an unknown assassin shot the prime minister in the chest with a pistol with a silencer. According to the third version, Amir fired blank cartridges, and Rabin was shot not in the square, but in his car on the way to the hospital. However, Yigal Amir confessed to the murder, citing his rejection of Rabin’s policy of compromise with the Palestinians, which he regarded as a betrayal of the Jews of Israel. On March 27, 1996, the court sentenced Amir to life imprisonment, finding him guilty of murder. In addition, he received six years in prison for wounding the prime minister's bodyguard. It is noteworthy that the court did not hear the key witness - the head of the EYAL and part-time agent of the Israeli General Security Service (analogous to the FBI) ​​Avishai Raviv, who recruited his friend Amir into the organization. After hearing the verdict, Amir said: “The Israeli state is a monster.” He is now serving his sentence in Ayalon prison in the city of Ramla without the right to pardon. In June 2005, the Israeli rabbinical court allowed Amir's marriage to Larisa Trembovler, a repatriate from Moscow, the mother of four children. The wife unsuccessfully tries to get Amir's case reviewed. The name of Yitzhak Rabin is given to the square where he was assassinated, a medical center, a power plant, the largest military base in Tel Aviv and dozens of other institutions, streets and squares throughout Israel.
October 27, 1999 killed Prime Minister of Armenia Vazgen Sargsyan. He died when a group of five terrorists burst into the meeting hall of the National Assembly of Armenia and shot the country's leaders and members of parliament with machine guns. The attack was shown live on national television. Along with the prime minister, the head of the National Assembly Karen Demirchyan, two vice-speakers, the minister of operational affairs and two deputies became victims of the terrorist attack. The majority of members of parliament and government were taken hostage by the terrorists. The action was led by former journalist Nairi Hunanyan, expelled from the nationalist Dashnaktsutyun party “for behavior discrediting the name of the party.” The group of attackers included his uncle Aram and his brother Karen, who, by the way, was once named after the speaker. After the attack, the attackers said that they did not intend to kill officials and deputies, but “only to scare” the ruling bloc and its leaders into resigning, but the shooting was provoked by parliament security. The attack was motivated by “a filial desire to protect the Motherland from final destruction.” Negotiations with terrorists, led by Armenian President Robert Kocharyan, lasted all night. Upon completion, the terrorists released the hostages and surrendered. The trial began on February 15, 2001, and the verdict was announced on December 2, 2003. The seven participants and organizers of the attack who appeared in court were found guilty of a number of charges, including treason and terrorism, and received 14 years to life in prison.
June 1, 2001 gunned down King of Nepal Birendra Bir Bikram Shah. The killer was his eldest son and heir to the throne, Dipendra. According to the official version, on the evening of June 1, during dinner at the palace in Kathmandu, Dipendra quarreled with his parents because they did not approve of his intentions to marry the daughter of a member of the Nepalese parliament, an Indian by birth. After the argument, a drunk Dipendra went to his apartment, donned a military uniform, returned to the dining room with an M-16 automatic rifle and fired 80 bullets at the family. King Birendra, Queen Ashwarya, their youngest son Prince Nirayan, daughter Princess Shruti, the king’s sisters Shrada and Shanti and his son-in-law were killed. Dipendra then went out into the garden, shot himself in the temple and fell into a coma. Moreover, after the death of his father, the prince legally became the monarch, so the State Council of Nepal appointed his uncle Gyanendra, the younger brother of the murdered king, as regent. He escaped death because he was not present at the dinner. In the first days after the tragedy, Nepal's official media reported that the weapon in Dipendra's hands "discharged spontaneously." Thousands took to the streets of Kathmandu demanding an investigation. On June 4, Dipendra died without regaining consciousness, and Gyanendra was proclaimed King of Nepal. This caused new protests: the Nepalese believed that Gyanendra used psychotropic substances to seize power, under the influence of which Dipendra shot his relatives. Gyanendra dissolved the government, declared a state of emergency in the country and suppressed demonstrations with police forces. On February 1, 2005, Gyanendra declared himself the sole ruler of the country. Periodic protests continue in Nepal.
March 12, 2003 shot dead at the entrance to the Serbian Government House building Prime Minister of Serbia Zoran Djindjic. In January 2001, he headed the government, which six months later, bypassing the decision of the Constitutional Court of Yugoslavia, in exchange for assistance from Western countries in the amount of $1.3 billion, extradited the country's ex-president Slobodan Milosevic to the International Tribunal in The Hague. According to investigators, a sniper hiding in one of the multi-story buildings fired two bullets from a Heckler & Koch G3 assault rifle at the 50-year-old prime minister. Djindjic, wounded in the stomach and back, died in hospital. The Serbian government has introduced a state of emergency for a month. The organizer of the murder was named as a Zemun criminal group (Zemun is a suburb of Belgrade). According to the investigation, Djindjic’s fight against organized crime and corruption caused a response from the Zemun clan. During the investigation, the clan was practically destroyed: the police arrested more than a thousand people, charging them with 400 criminal cases. The accomplices in the murder, according to the prosecutor's office, were security officials close to the Milosevic administration. The arrested former deputy commander of the special forces of the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs "Red Berets" Zvezdan Jovanovic admitted to be the perpetrator. The trial began in December 2003 and is still ongoing. Charges in the Djindjic murder case have been brought against 36 people, some of whom are wanted. On May 2, 2004, the main suspect in organizing the terrorist attack, the leader of the Zemunites, the commander of the Red Berets, Milorad Lukovic, nicknamed Legia (Legionnaire), voluntarily surrendered to the police, declaring his innocence. So far, the prosecution's version contradicts the testimony of key witnesses. Thus, the head of the prime minister's security, Milan Veruovic, who was next to Djindjic at the time of the murder, claims that there were three shots, and there were two shooters - the detained Jovanovic and an unknown person. In February 2005, Djindjic's former comrade-in-arms, Vladimir Popovich, put forward a new version: the murder was the result of a conspiracy by security forces who feared a reshuffle in the security command.
February 26, 2004 died in a plane crash President of Macedonia Boris Trajkovski. The Beech Aircraft presidential plane, which had been in operation for more than 30 years, crashed 10 km from the Bosnian city of Mostar. Along with Trajkovski, six people from his entourage and two crew members died. In the first days after the disaster, the media put forward various versions - from rainy weather and a forced landing on an area where mines from the 1992-1995 war were preserved, to a terrorist attack by Islamic radicals. Investigators in Bosnia and Herzegovina blamed the crash on the French battalion of the International Stabilization Force (SFOR), which provided technical support to Mostar airport. According to this version, three days before the disaster, the radar installation used to guide Trajkovsky’s plane failed. But the SFOR command denied these statements. On May 5, 2004, the Minister of Transport of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Branko Dokic, announced the results of the investigation commission, which recognized that “the plane crash was caused by errors during the flight and maneuvering before landing made by the crew.”
February 3, 2005 died Prime Minister of Georgia Zurab Zhvania. According to the official version, the 41-year-old prime minister suffered carbon monoxide poisoning while visiting a friend. According to the investigation, combustion products accumulated in the room due to improper installation of the Iranian-made Nikala stove. A criminal case under the article “criminal negligence leading to grave consequences” was opened against the stove maker, but the search for him did not yield any results. Pathologists did not reveal any physical damage to the bodies of Zhvania and his friend. Many residents of Georgia did not believe the official conclusion, and US FBI specialists joined the investigation and confirmed the version of the accident. It is also shared by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. But family members of the victims claimed evidence was manipulated and insisted on Zhvania’s violent death. In particular, relatives claim that no fingerprints were found in the apartment where the burnt victims were found, and the bodies were moved there after their murder.