Translated from Arabic by Farnaz Perry
This paper examines political assassinations from two perspectives. The first section deals with the knowledge gap, as the existing studies on this topic consist mainly of the chronological documentation of assassinations and their judicial trajectories. The paper also raises the question of the gap between the legal, cultural, and epistemic tools needed for analysis and deterrence. The second section sheds light on the motivations behind the assassination of three prominent Syrian Kurds and why certain public figures become exclusive targets of assassinations. It also highlights the confusion, indeed contradictions, that exist between liberation movements and democratic processes within societies and political parties.
The relationship between power and crime, which has made crime an instrument of governancepar excellence, becomes clear in the context of political murders. The blurred boundary between the political and criminal spheres poses a legal challenge that existing criminal law doctrines do not address. For the current legal procedures are inadequate to deal with this type of crime and to determine an appropriate punishment. This inadequacy stems from the fact that classifying a political assassination as premeditated murder ignores a crucial aspect of this crime — an aspect that goes beyond the killing of a person. In these cases, the primary target is the political opposition represented by the victim, which requires systematic intimidation of individuals on the basis of their political rank. Moreover, the contradictory legal consequences of such killings mean that justice in these cases cannot be divorced from its political context.
This has historically led to unfair and hierarchical treatment of people who have been the target of political assassination. Certain cases are reduced, through legal adaptation, to mere assaults, while others are considered offenses against an entire nation.
In the absence of a legal definition of political assassination, proponents of a legal movement are calling for uniform criteria for justice. They have proposed that political murders be subsumed into the category of intentional homicide, as has been the case with terrorist acts, since they both constitute the destruction of real life. The proposal aims to prevent the resurgence of a medieval theological practice that categorized murder victims according to their social status, as was the case during the eighteenth-century wave of regicide in Europe. Following Kantorowitz’s concept of the «king’s two bodies»,[4] a similar approach can be applied to political assassinations by referring to them as crimes against the «victim’s two bodies». This refers to the death of both the individual and the political symbol, which varies in importance within the public sphere, that the victim represents.
For instance, the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian in Sarajevo in 1914 led to the outbreak of the First World War. In Lebanon, a wave of assassinations led to the establishment of a special tribunal in 2005, the first international court to deal with political assassinations on the basis of an international legal framework, namely «terrorism in peacetime».[2] At that time, international law was not yet prepared to address this crime with international legal instruments. In the past, various international tribunals, from the military tribunal in Nuremberg in 1945 and Tokyo in 1946 to the subsequent tribunals for Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone in the 1990s, were established to deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity in the context of transitional justice.[3] Other homicides in repressive regimes are referred to national judicial authorities, where they are forgotten. Many assassination cases in countries such as Syria and Iraq end up in bureaucratic oblivion.
Other challenges facing the legal system are the delays and prohibitive financial costs that hinder the work of the international criminal justice structure. An example of these obstacles is the Lebanese government’s efforts to seek UN support for the establishment of a special tribunal in its quest for judicial redress. This request culminated in the promulgation of Security Council Resolution 1757 (2007). However, by 2020, the Tribunal had only succeeded in convicting one person and acquitting two others, who were convicted in absentia in 2022. The Tribunal’s expenses have exceeded one billion dollars annually, with Lebanon contributing forty million dollars each year, not to mention the significant political pressure that influences the course of investigations and prosecutions.
As to the American «Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act»,[4] it continues to have limited influence. When it was first enacted in 2012, President Obama announced visa restrictions against eighteen Russian officials accused of being involved in Magnitsky’s death. Subsequently, the US Congress passed a second version in 2016, which allows for the punishment of officials and individuals involved in serious human rights violations worldwide. However, the impact remains minimal as the list does not include more than sixty people worldwide.
In repressive environments, on the other hand, public dissent is criminalized and labeled as treason. In the absence of real separation of powers, public and criminal law become meaningless for a variety of reasons. These include the incompetence of the judiciary in the face of militia forces controlling the state security apparatus. Or the state deliberately violates the law, as in Syria, where it resorts to assassination as a measure to eliminate individuals suspected of becoming political opponents.
Furthermore, it has proven difficult to identify the perpetrators of assassinations because legal systems lack the necessary analytical tools. For instance, they rely on material criteria for the identification of victims, even though the notion of «harm» may have a broader scope. An assassination constitutes, by its very nature, more than the mere physical act of killing. It is a violation of everything the victim represented, as a medium for the collective right to resist political subjugation.
A political assassination involves an active murderer and a secret accomplice, as well as the instigators and orchestrators of the crime. As such, the actual perpetrator is a hierarchical network of criminals who are deeply involved in the political dynamics and power struggles and from whom the order to kill originates. These entities must be collectively punished so that murder trials do not degenerate into a theatrical show in which the arrows of justice are directed at the shadow of the true criminal. In these performative trials, the justice system is simply supplied with the sacrificial lambs ready to be redeemed without the real perpetrators suffering any losses.
The word «assassination» is associated with the eleventh century Ismaili sect al-Ḥashāshīn, which had fortified itself in the castle of Alamut [5] in Iran. Over time, the name of this group became synonymous with the word killer in several European languages, appearing in the phrase la perfido assassinto [6] in the fourteenth canto of Dante’s Inferno. The term was passed on by various sources prior to Marco Polo’s visit to Alamut, from where he provided information about this group through translations.[7]
As a result, these murderers, who voluntarily risked their lives to defend their fortress, became legendary, and the term «assassinate», derived from the Arabic word for hashish consumer, namely ḥashāshīn, became widespread and deeply rooted in the European imagination. Another possible explanation is that translators at the time mistakenly associated the word «assassin» with the followers of Hassan ibn Sabbah (1124-1034), the founder of the Nizari Ismailiyyah Hashashin sect. This anthropological interpretation has left a deep and heavy impact on the reality of these crimes today.
Hasan ibn Sabbah, also known as «Sheikh al-Jabal» [8] and «Sayyid Hasan», was well versed in Pythagorean philosophy and the Islamic sciences. He was a cunning orator who lulled his followers into obedience with promises and deceptions, and manipulated their emotions. He created architectural hierarchies within the fortress that reflected the gradation of status based on blind loyalty. Ibn Sabbah withdrew into the castle for thirty-five years until his death, and his metaphysical existence became essential to the maintenance of his symbolic, annihilating presence.
The elite among his followers, the chosen killers, were drugged with their master’s teachings and hashish and given access to a simulated paradise[9] that they saw and believed in. They trusted the promises of the «Chief of the Mountain» regarding the pleasures that could be obtained through absolute loyalty. Ibn Sabbah succeeded in shaping the emptied selves of his disciples, so that they were ready to receive organizational instructions as if they came from within themselves. This guaranteed blind obedience. Since the organization and its leader, their intermediary between the world and the hereafter, were seen as one and the same, the killers cared little for human relationships.
Ibn Sabbah’s first victim was his friend Nizam al-Mulk, vizier of the Seljuk Empire. Together with the poet friend Omar Khayyam, the three had sworn to support each other as soon as one of them was appointed to office. However, the vizier, who feared his friend’s ambitions, withdrew the privileges he had granted ibn Sabbah. As a result, the sheikh fled to Cairo, but later returned to systematize the terrorist activities of the Hashashin movement.
In 1164, another leader, also named Hasan, took over the leadership of the movement, which spread across the Levant. Eventually, the movement turned into an organized group led by the Mughals and infiltrated the region as one of the ruling forces. Later, during the reign of the Ottoman rulers, assassinations were used as a strategy to maintain power. Fratricide, the killing of brothers, was introduced as a legal method of securing the throne,[10] followed by the legalization of political murder. The first to use this law was Sultan Yildirim Bayezid, who killed his brother, followed by Suleiman the Magnificent, who murdered his own sons.[11] This was an extension of the practice introduced by the «Chief of the Mountain», who had not hesitated to murder his children in return for absolute obedience.
These events are part of a general culture that does not perceive assassination as a shameful act. In fact, murderers are sometimes portrayed as martyrs. One example of this is the tribute paid to the Chechen assassin Abdullakh Anzorov in the cities of Syria, where pictures of him were prominently displayed. Anzorov beheaded Samuel Paty, a French teacher, in 2020 and was subsequently regarded as a martyr by the entire nation. This incident went unnoticed in a culture that remains silent in the face of this social spectacle in the Middle East, where allegiance to tyrants who see no harm in killing is constantly reaffirmed. It exposes a cognitive error in a culture that neglects the study of crime and fails to use prisons as micro-sociological laboratories, where a fuller understanding of our societies could be achieved.
For example, in the introduction to his book Al-Ightiyal al-Siyasi fi-l-Islam [12], Hadi Al-Alawi limits his argument to only two points: first, that the act of assassination is against the values of pre-Islamic chivalry, which condemns treason and considers it a shameful act of cowards; and second, that assassination according to the Quran (22:38) is illegal in Islam.[13] Al-Alawi goes on to say that the Prophet Muhammad is quoted in Sunan Abu Dawud saying: «Faith has prevented treacherous assassinations. A believer does not commit treacherous assassination». The rest of Abu Dawud’s book is a documentation of the history of political assassinations in Islam, which also appears in other works.
By examining the origins of assassination, we can observe its role as a political tool and how it inevitably leads to terrorism. Historical analysis also allows us to distinguish this form of assassination from other operations that are carried out by international intelligence agencies during the conflicts in which they are constantly involved, such as the American Patriot Act of 2011. This law was an expansion of the United States Secret Service’s covert practice of recruiting mercenaries to assassinate individuals deemed enemies of the state, including Castro and Salvador Allende. This practice continued until President Ford banned it in 1976. Not to mention the introduction of drones as a means of peacetime assassination to circumvent judicial procedures to prosecute defendants. In this study, however, we focus exclusively on assassinations carried out by political entities or religious sects against other political entities.
Amidst the geopolitical complexities surrounding the fragmented Kurdish people, the Kurdish resistance has carried out covert political activities and resorted to militarization in response to the authoritarianism of the countries that surround their people. However, the Kurdish liberation movement has been colored by the political nature of the regimes against which it is fighting. As a result, Kurdish political activists face the prospect of clandestine or public elimination, ostensibly on the grounds of protecting the revolutionary cause. In the absence of legal governmental authority in the region, the main reason for the targeted assassination of Kurdish figures is their ability to influence the political development of the movements that control the discourse of liberation. Given these circumstances, it is difficult to obtain sufficient information about the assassination of the leaders of the Kurdish movement, because a culture of silence continues to prevail within it; members are driven by the fear of suffering a similar fate. We have therefore opted for a qualitative approach, focusing on the circumstances of three Syrian Kurdish figures who fell victim to assassination: Kamal Shahin, Mashuq al-Khaznawi, and Mashaal Tammo.
Kamal Shahin was murdered in the early morning hours of February 17, 2005, in the Bayinjan area of Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan. The crime took place at the headquarters of the Iraqi National Accord, a political party founded by Shahin and a group of his friends who had defected from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on June 11, 2004. Shahin had initially participated in the founding of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which today governs the self-administered areas in north-eastern Syria. However, he withdrew from this party to start his own political project dedicated to the Kurdish cause in Syria, completely independent of the ideology of any other Kurdish party. The author believes that his charismatic leadership played an important role in his assassination.
Shahin was murdered by three armed individuals who entered the party headquarters at dawn and killed him in the spacious courtyard. Kurdish security forces arrested the murderers, who were tried without media coverage. Information based on word of mouth revealed that each of the perpetrators told the judge that Shahin had «betrayed the party» as the reason for the murder. By convention, the PKK’s internal policy follows a practice similar to how apostasy is handled. Politically influential members are eliminated once they deviate from the party line, and their most productive years of service cannot free them from this fate. Less influential members are treated with alternative measures, which often include refusing to acknowledge their repentance. This is justified by the party’s fear of possible security breaches in its ranks, and the assassination, in turn, only serves to bring shame on the victim. Fuad Shangali, Shahin’s partner in the establishment of the Iraqi National Accord, and other individuals who have defected from the PKK are now potential targets for political assassination.
Kamal Shahin had refused Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s offer to protect him, on the grounds that he had spent his life as a fighter and did not want to be protected by anyone. He had explained to those close to him: «I know my comrades in this party. The decision to eliminate me has been made, and it will be carried out whether I am protected or not».
The annals of the Kurdish liberation movement are characterized by cruel internal purges. This grim reality is often shrouded in mystery because the major Kurdish parties are adept at targeting those who investigate their confidential historical records. Like other liberation movements, the Kurdish quest for freedom is primarily about overthrowing a particular regime, rather than advocating a complete break from it by presenting a democratic alternative. In fact, most Kurdish parties reject democracy to the point of opposition. One aspect of this is the worship of leaders. There is an implicit prohibition of alternative commanders and of deviation from the established path of leadership. The decision to assassinate Kamal Shahin was taken in this context.
Shahin had the necessary leadership qualities to represent the Kurdish population in Syria, with a degree of independence and transparency that came closer to the ideal model and set him apart from the existing standard. He was always attentive, renowned for the sagacity of a thoughtful observer. He expressed his thoughts succinctly, taking advice from comrades and those who valued his expertise in shaping his political project. Shahin rejected the notion of leadership and actively sought advice to establish the Kurdish cause in Syria as a political project rooted in the democratization of the country. His political and ethical values, to which he steadfastly adhered with courage and dedication, were on display for all to see and a quality not easily found in others. After all, the compromise of principles is no longer considered a vice if it serves the private interests of a political entity, even if it is at the expense of the common good.
Mohammed Mashuq al-Khaznawi was a reformist scholar, who rose to fame in Syria. He came from the Naqshbandi Sufi tradition, which his family followed, but later rejected it because he denounced institutionalized mediation between God and his worshippers. He was well-versed in religious studies and philology and was familiar with the modern humanities, which he incorporated into the latter in order to modernize religious values and put them into daily practice. Al-Khaznawi was an eloquent debater and skillful orator who knew how to reinforce contemporary issues with religious texts. These included the responsibility to defend the rights that God has bestowed on people, emphasizing that these «rights must not be given as charity, but must be taken by force». He also called for reason as a point of reference for approaching God and rejected mediation by religious clerics, an entity he denied existed in Islam. He viewed clerics as mere tools to politicize religious sentiments and destroy sound thinking among people.
Al-Khaznawi spoke out in favor of freeing Islam from religious ignorance and rejected the way in which different denominations accuse each other of godlessness. He declared that sectarian animosity has no religious justification and is a form of political domination. Al-Khaznawi believed that there should be no separation between the religious and the political as long as both strive for the common good. He was a strong supporter of Kurdish-Arab solidarity and recognized the need to promote religious pluralism in order to restore a sense of citizenship in Syria. He was one of the very few who saw secularism as compatible with Islam, and he explained this unbiased view in his television program, which was broadcast on Kurdistan TV.
Al-Khaznawi entered the political arena to openly stand up for the rights of the Kurdish people in Syria and articulated a demand that was unprecedented among Kurdish politicians: the assertion of the right to use force. Following the Kurdish uprising against the Syrian Baath regime in 2004, in which numerous Kurdish youths lost their lives — including Farhad Mohammad, whose death under torture turned his funeral into a platform for intensifying the struggle against the Syrian regime — al-Khaznawi gave a convincing and courageous speech. In it, he used religious rhetoric to campaign for political rights and called for the martyrs not to be forgotten, but for their deaths to be turned into weapons. «A nation doomed to destruction can be revived by a single man», was one of al-Khaznawi’s maxims.
The intellectual efforts of al-Khaznawi and Muhammad Habash, his partner in founding the Center for Islamic Studies in Damascus, which was to be closed in 2009, focused on combating ignorance among the devoutly religious. The Syrian Baath Party saw this endeavor as a sabotage of two crucial, inextricably linked means by which the regime controlled the population — namely the spread of ignorance and the clerics. Muhammad Habash commented on this in a television interview saying that when al-Khaznawi’s son was being arrested, he told the security officer that his aim was merely to educate the people. The officer then explicitly stated that this was exactly the activity he should refrain from.
Evidently, al-Khaznawi’s activities were the main reason for his assassination. A leaked report from a security meeting in al-Hasakah province on May 8, 2005, states that «al-Khaznawi has become a problem and must be eliminated».At that time, al-Khaznawi had returned from a trip to Europe, where he had given lectures on reforms and the political rights of the Kurds. On May 10, 2005, a five-member security group abducted al-Khaznawi from his office at the Center for Islamic Studies on al-Misat Square in Damascus. This incident sparked protests in Damascus and other Syrian cities and prompted the Syrian regime to concoct a rather naive scenario that was aired on television on June 2, 2005. The report claimed that a criminal group had kidnapped al-Khaznawi on the orders of someone called «Abdul Razzaq», without giving any details about the mastermind behind the kidnapping.
The security authorities took al-Khaznawi to the military hospital in Damascus and then hurried him away. This information, as well as the testimony of the doctor, was confirmed by the Violations Documentation Center, which noted that the detainee’s medical file bore a number instead of a name.
The protests spread to most Kurdish areas and the capital Damascus, and the funeral of al-Khaznawi developed into an even stronger uprising than that of 2004, prompting the head of the National Security Office in the presidential palace, Hisham Ikhtiyar, to meet with the leaders of the Kurdish parties afterwards and tell them: «If you do not ask people to return to their homes, we will do to you what we did in Hama in 1982».
At this point, the situation came to a standstill.
Mashaal Tammo founded a politically inclusive party in Syria that transcended narrow national affiliations. His vision was to unite the struggles of Syrians, regardless of their ethnicity, be they Kurds or Arabs. The core principle of his political ideology was the introduction of citizenship as a fundamental right in order to bring about regime change and promote democracy in Syria. In order to realize the rights of the Kurds as an integral part of universal Syrian citizenship, Tammo advocated the liberation of all ethnic groups from entrenched divisions. His vision aimed to bring different communities together under the banner of citizenship to participate in the national political discourse in Syria. Tammo believed that this unifying force would undermine the Baathist strategy of fragmenting the population into conflicting administrative units and preventing the emergence of any form of national solidarity; under the regime, certain issues remain confined to local communities, which are silenced, and are not transformed into a broader national concern.
In line with this vision, Tammo founded the «Kurdish Future Movement» party in 2005, based on explicit political principles. He used public space, transforming streets and social occasions into platforms for political discourse. Tammo criticized the Kurdish movement in Syria and accused it of neglecting the demands of both the Kurdish and the Syrian populations. Tammo’s call for the right to liberate themselves from oppression and advocate a change of government gained momentum following two crucial events that took place in the Kurdish areas of Syria: the 2004 uprising and the assassination of al-Khaznawi in 2005. Al-Khaznawi's funeral, as mentioned above, renewed the commitment to internal resistance against the Baathist regime, and Tammo’s fearless speeches intensified the political confrontation with it. His increasing popularity made him a prominent Syrian leader and then a Kurdish leader. He was seen by the rest of Syria as the first Kurdish leader to advocate non-sectarian demands.
Tammo was arrested in 2008 and sentenced to three years in prison in 2009. He was then released in early June 2011, three months after the popular protests began in Syria. The regime believed that his release could dispel the escalating mood among the Kurdish public. However, it further fueled the anger of the Syrian people who were looking for courageous and honest leaders for their revolution. Contrary to the regime’s expectations, Tammo’s imprisonment and the timing of his release increased hope and courage for regime change. Tammo rejected the negotiations proposed by the regime. He declared that he had no intention of bargaining with the life of the Syrian people, regardless of their ethnicity.
In light of the persecution of Tammo, Al-Arabiya channel later published leaked documents revealing that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad was directly involved in ordering his assassination. Tammo survived an assassination attempt on September 8, 2011, before being murdered a month later, on October 7, in his home in the city of Qamishli, where gunmen entered and opened fire on him, his family and his friends.
To summarize, the three assassinations have at least two aspects in common, that made the elimination of the leaders necessary. Firstly, their adoption of a reformist political project that fundamentally contradicts the existing autocratic system. Secondly, their ability to overcome social stagnation and involve civil groups as decisive actors in shaping political influence. Thus, resulting in a population that is not bound by dogmatic loyalties.
Hence, the elimination of the pioneers of the democratic project undermines the possibility of changing the current system, leaving only violent outcomes as possible solutions: coups, power-driven assassinations, and the perpetuation of repression under different guises.
[2]Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Ali Muqallid, National Development Center, 1990, p. 66. Source consulted and references put in Arabic by the author.
[3]Cassese, Antonio. International Criminal Law. Oxford University. Translated by Sader Library, 2015, p. 10. Source consulted and reference put in Arabic by the author.
[4]Ibid., p. 478.
[5]A special section isolated from the rest of the fortress of Alamut housed women, wine, and food. Access to this area was granted exclusively to the elite among the followers.[6] Bernard Lewis. Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam. Translated by Mohamed Al-Arab Mousa, Madbouli Library, 2006, p. 14. Source consulted and references put in Arabic by the author.
[7] Ahmet Agaoglu, and Said Öztürk. The Unknown Ottoman Empire. Translated by Orhan Ali and Onur Lutfi Oglu, Ottoman Research Foundation Publications, 2008, p. 131. Source consulted and references put in Arabic by the author.
[8]Ibid. 132-139.
[9]Hadi Al-Alawi. Political Assassination in Islam. 5th ed., Dar Al-Mada, 1999, pp. 7-8. Source consulted and references put in Arabic by the author.