#5 There are some other interesting variables to assassination. The first is payback: is the enemy organization likely to respond with effective counter-assassination?
The second is promotion: Israel once assassinated a South American terrorist leader, and his replacement was Carlos the Jackal, a far more effective terrorist.
The third is deniability: top assassins recruit local nuts to be their trigger men, and are two countries away in the Holiday Inn sipping martinis when the hit goes down.
The fourth is the message: Is the purpose of assassination just death, or is it to send a message? This is in infamous, if fictional, "extreme prejudice."
The fifth is the means: should it look like a homicide, or an accident? If several assassinations are planned, you don't want subsequent kills to put their guard up.
Sixth is the assassination decision making process. There are always more candidates for assassination than are practical, or even desirable. So the list must be scrutinized, as well as the time frame for the hit. This leads to a hierarchy of targets, to maximize the effect of the hit.
Seventh, as with a military operation, the most important part of an assassination plan is the mission, what you want the assassination to accomplish.
And finally eighth, mission abortion. Many assassinations are aborted before execution, so there has to be a clear communications channel open to the assassins, in case the situation has changed. |
The apparent Israeli assassination of a Hamas operative in the United Arab Emirates turned into a bizarre event replete with numerous fraudulent passports, alleged Israeli operatives caught on videotape and international outrage (much of it feigned), more over the use of fraudulent passports than over the operative's death. If we are to believe the media, it took nearly 20 people and an international incident to kill him.