NEW DELHI: In June, Nikhil Gupta sent a video to his contact showing a man shot 34 times while slumped over the wheel of his van outside a Canadian gurdwara.
According to Foreign Policy magazine, cross-border murders have resurfaced as a tool of statecraft.
Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the man in the video, is alleged by police to be just one of Gupta’s targets. “We have so many targets,” Gupta wrote to his contact.
US prosecutors claim that Gupta was attempting to coordinate the murder of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a New York-based lawyer and leader of the Sikhs for Justice organization who is still alive.
Investigators in both Canada and the United States suspect that Pannun and Nijjar, leaders in Sikhs for Justice, were targeted for their involvement in organizing a global referendum for an independent Khalistan—a movement aiming to separate Punjab from India and establish an independent Sikh state.
While Canadian authorities have yet to make an arrest in Nijjar’s killing, Gupta was apprehended in the Czech Republic in June at the request of the United States. An indictment filed in New York alleges that Gupta had attempted to hire a hitman for Pannun’s murder; however, he unknowingly contacted a police informant and, subsequently, an undercover officer.
These allegations reveal India’s entry into a group of nations employing homicide to further their international and domestic agendas, illustrating a resurgence of political assassinations that is no longer exclusive to superpowers. Recent years have seen Iran and North Korea accused of bold foreign murders. Moreover, Israel, known for extraterritorial targeted killings, appears to have reactivated its assassination program by eliminating senior Hamas leaders, with at least three figures from the group killed recently.
Brief History of Global Assassination
Agnès Callamard, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, emphasizes the presence of impunity in these acts, suggesting that without international condemnation and prosecution, targeted extrajudicial killings may escalate. Political assassinations on foreign soil are widely considered illegal under international law and diplomatic norms, with potential consequences ranging from diplomatic condemnation to an act of war.
Despite these considerations, the stage is set for an increase in such killings if there is no robust reaction from the international community.
On April 23, 1959, Cuban leader Fidel Castro displayed a smile while holding up a newspaper with a headline detailing the discovery of a plot to kill him.
Political assassinations on foreign soil are universally considered illegal according to international law, and diplomatically, they are deemed a cardinal sin, potentially even constituting an act of war.
Throughout much of the 20th century, most countries refrained from engaging in the assassination game due to a fear of consequences and a perceived low assessment of benefits. Those few nations that did resort to targeted killings developed their internal rules to determine whom to target, when, where, and how.
During the Cold War, the world’s two superpowers employed assassinations, albeit for markedly different purposes. A 1964 CIA memo noted that the Soviets resorted to murder mainly for individuals considered exceptionally dangerous to the regime and unable to be kidnapped. While the Soviet Union primarily targeted its own citizens criticizing the regime from abroad, exceptions occurred, such as the abduction and killing of German lawyer Walter Linse in 1953 from American-occupied Berlin.
On the American front, the CIA’s assassination program, documented in the “Family Jewels,” frequently targeted foreign leaders perceived to be under the influence of communism. Some attempts, like the plan to kill Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, were unsuccessful. Other leaders, such as South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, were killed during US-backed coups before assassination attempts could materialize. The revelation of these plots prompted a comprehensive investigation by a US Senate select committee known as the Church Committee.
The committee concluded that, aside from wartime, assassination is incompatible with American principles, international order, and morality. As a result, President Gerald Ford concurred and formalized a prohibition on political assassinations through an executive order in 1976.
North Korea attempted an ambitious raid on South Korea’s Blue House in 1968, targeting President Park Chung-hee. The 1997 murder of defector Yi Han-yong, a nephew of Kim Jong Il, is also believed to be the responsibility of North Korea.
Israel has significantly integrated assassination into its foreign and security policies, primarily targeting Palestinian leaders and Nazi war criminals since its inception. Initially avoiding operations on friendly soil, Israel’s stance changed after the 1972 Munich Games attack by the Palestinian militant group Black September. The subsequent Israeli group engaged in approximately two dozen targeted killings of Palestinian militants and leaders, even on European soil, abandoning the prior commitment.
In the 21st century, targeted killings appeared to be on the decline, but the Second Intifada and the 9/11 attacks ushered in a new era. The US congressional authorization in 2001 paved the way for operations like the 2020 drone strike on Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani. The use of drones became prevalent, with leaked documents revealing the US military’s elimination of at least nine “high-value individuals” in Somalia and Yemen from 2011 to mid-2012.
Israel revitalized its assassination campaign, focusing on leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. The country’s targeted killing program, detailed in Ronen Bergman’s “Rise and Kill First,” played a significant role in shaping the global war on terrorism. Bergman estimates that Israel conducted around 500 targeted killing operations in the decades before 2000, doubling during the Second Intifada and reaching at least 800 operations up to 2018. Recent reports suggest Israel plans to escalate its killing program by targeting Hamas leaders outside of Gaza.
Agnès Callamard of Amnesty International emphasizes the normalization of targeted killings as a quasi-justified means of waging the “war on terror,” hindering the establishment of clear ground rules against extraterritorial killings.
