ASSASSINATIONS
& ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS
See Also: DANCE The Laban Centre, Bullseye Bowen ; CHILDREN's LITERATURE
Kenneth Grahame; DOGS Royal Dogs, Corgis et al.; EXECUTIONS; THE GUNPOWDER
PLOT; HOW MUCH ONE IS LOVED; MURDERS
Foreign-State Sponsored
Alexander
Litvinenko
Boris
Berezovsky was one of the oligarchs who helped Vladimir Putin to attain power
in Russia. Once the ex-K.G.B. officer
had control of The Kremlin he sought to restrain the activities of his
associate's media interests. In October
1998 Alexander Litvinenko, a lieutenant-colonel in the F.S.B.'s Organised Crime
Directorate, accused the state agency of planning to murder Mr Berezovsky.
In
September 1999 a series of attacks killed 300 Russians. Moscow used them as justification for
launching the Second Chechen War the following year. Subsequently, Putin became more assertive
within Russian politics. In 2000
Berezovsky fled into exile.
Mr
Litvinenko moved to Britain the same year.
He became an outspoken critic of Putin.
In September 2006 Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist was murdered in
Russia. She had been a strong critic of
the Putin regime. The following month
Litvinenko met some old associates for a drink in the Pine Bar of The
Millennium Hotel in Grosvenor Square.
It is believed that, while he was in their company, he was exposed to
some polonium 210, which is highly radioactive.
In November he died in University College Hospital.
Litvinenko s
corpse was buried in Highgate Cemetery.
It had had to be placed in a specially sealed coffin that had been
provided by the Health Protection Agency.
Berezovsky
may have committed suicide in 2013 at his house in Berkshire.
Sir
Robert Owen, the Assistant Deputy Coroner for Inner North London, had asked the
Home Office that a public inquiry should be held into Litvinenko's death. This was because, in his capacity as a
coroner, he was not allowed to consider secret evidence on whether the Russian
state might have been involved in the murder.
In 2013 it was reported that the department had informed the pre-inquest
hearing into the killing that the government was not going to hold a public
inquiry into the matter. Litvinenko s
widow responded by stating that she would launch a legal challenge to the
decision. It was anticipated that she
was going to seek a judicial review.
Subsequently, it was reported that in a letter that Theresa May the Home
Secretary had sent to Sir Robert she had stated that the reason for her
decision had been derived in part from international relations .
Early the following year the High Court ruled in Marina
Litvinenko's favour. It told the Home
Office that it should reconsider its decision to wait upon the outcome of a
normal inquest before deciding whether there should be a public inquiry. A few weeks later a coroner's court was
convened in Windsor to examine Berezovsky's death. At the conclusion of proceedings, the Coroner
for Berkshire gave an open verdict. This
meant that the official believed that there was no definite proof that the
exile had not been murdered. The reasons
for this decision included: an unaccounted fingerprint that had been found
close to the body; an academic expert on hanging and asphyxiation having stated
that the physical evidence indicated strangulation and not hanging; and the
fact that when a paramedic had arrived at the site the radiation alarm that he
had been carrying had sounded.
On 17 July Flight MH17, a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 that was
flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was destroyed by a surface-to-air
missile as it was over eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Region. The SA11 Buk had been fired by a group of
separatists. 298 people were killed,
over 80 of them were children. A high
proportion of them were either Dutch, Malaysian, or Australian. International opinion swiftly concluded that
the weapon and its mobile delivery system had been part of a secret convoy of
150 military vehicles that had been supplied by the Putin regime. It took a number of days before the rebels
allowed bodies to be recovered from the wreckage. It was widely believed that in the interim
the site was tampered with in order to try to alter the material evidence. Subsequently, the Home Office announced that
it was setting up a public inquiry into Litvinenko's death. His widow welcomed this development.
(In
2018 Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence colonel, and his
daughter Yulia were attacked with a highly toxic chemical while they were in
the Maltings Shopping Centre in Salisbury.
He had passed secrets to M.I.6, been detected and imprisoned, and in
2010 had been part of a prisoner swop.)
Location:
The Biltmore Mayfair, 44 Grosvenor Square, W1K 2HP. (Formerly, The Millennium Hotel.)
(purple, brown)
University
College Hospital, 235 Euston Road, NW1 2BU (blue, yellow)
Highgate
Cemetery, Swains Lane, N6 6PJ
Georgi
Markov
That
speech radio is a powerful medium was illustrated in 1978 by the then Bulgarian
regime's assassination of Georgi Markov, an exiled Bulgarian playwright and
B.B.C. World Service broadcaster. While
he was waiting for a bus near Waterloo Bridge, he was shot in the leg with a
ricin pellet that had been discharged from a pistol made to look like an
umbrella. Four days later he died.
In 2008
it was reported that Scotland Yard was actively investigating the Markov
case. The police had identified
Francesco Gullino, a Dane of Italian descent, as being a central figure in it. He was a petty criminal whom the Bulgarian
security service had turned into one of their agents after catching him
smuggling drugs in 1971. He had last
been seen in 1993.
The
1.5mm-diametre spherical, platinum-iridium pellet had two tiny holes that had
been drilled into it right angles. At
one point while Robin Keeley (1944-2010), a Met forensic pathologist, while
working at Porton Down, dropped the pellet and almost lost it.
A key
breakthrough in the case was that the same pellet technology was used in an
unsuccessful assassination attempt in Paris.
Location:
Waterloo Bridge, c.WC2E 7ED (orange, red)
See
Also: BRIDGES Waterloo Bridge; BUSES Bus Stops; RADIO The B.B.C. World Service;
UMBRELLAS
Majestic Targets
See
Also: HOW MUCH ONE IS LOVED
Constitution
Hill
During
the 1840s three separate assassination attempts were made on Queen Victoria s
life along Constitution Hill. This helps
to explain her disinclination, after the death of her husband Prince Albert
(d.1861), to reside more than briefly at Buckingham Palace. Instead, she chose to spend most of her time
at Windsor Castle.
Location:
Constitution Hill, c. SW1A 1AA (orange, grey)
See
Also: PALACES Buckingham Palace; TOWNHOUSES Lancaster House
His
Majesty's Pleasure
James
Hadfield was a former soldier who suffered from paranoia. He wanted to die. In 1800 he attempted to do so by trying to
assassinate King George III, believing that he would himself be consequently
executed. The veteran made his attempt
at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.
However, David Moses Dyte (c.1770-1830), a quill merchant, struck
him from behind causing him to miss. He
was apprehended. At the subsequent
trial, Hadfield's barrister argued that the man was not guilty because he had
been insane at the time of the attack.
The court accepted this argument.
To
prevent a repetition of such, Parliament passed the Criminal Lunatics Act of
1800. This provided for the detention of
individuals who were acquitted of crimes on the grounds of insanity. Such persons were to be detained until His
Majesty's Pleasure was made known. In
the early Victorian era the exercise of the Pleasure was transferred from the
Crown to the Home Secretary.
Location:
Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Catherine Street, WC2B 5JF (red, purple)
See
Also: MENTAL HEALTH; MURDERS Martha Ray; ROYALTY; STATIONERY Quills; WEST END
THEATRES The Theatre Royal Drury Lane
Political Targets
Cato
Street Conspirators
Following
the end of the Napoleonic Wars the United Kingdom experienced a period of
intense social and economic upheaval.
Lord Castlereagh was appointed to be the government's chief spokesman on
home affairs in the House of Commons.1 As such, he became identified with the very
unpopular draconian policies that the state introduced in order to try to
address the situation.
The
Cato Street conspirators were men who felt that they had been displaced by the
changes that British society was experiencing.
They coalesced around Arthur Thistlewood. Their meeting-place was a property on Cato
Street, near to the Edgware Road. They
planned to kill the Irish peer and the rest of the Cabinet at a dinner that was
to be hosted by the 1st Earl of Harrowby at his townhouse in
Grosvenor Square.
The
authorities learnt of the plot and the conspirators were arrested. In 1820 five of their number became the last
people to be beheaded at Tyburn. Others
were hanged at Newgate Gaol and the rest were transported for life.
In 1822
Castlereagh committed suicide.
Location:
1a Cato Street, W1H 5HG (blue, red)
44
Grosvenor Square, W1K 2HP (purple, brown)
50
Berkeley Square, W1J 5BA. Canning s
home. (purple, orange)
1. The 1st Viscount Sidmouth the Home Secretary then being
in the House of Lords. Castlereagh s
title was a courtesy one as the heir-apparent of his father. It did not bar him from his sitting as an
M.P..
Edmund
Drummond
In 1842
Edmund Drummond, Robert Peel's secretary, was murdered. The killer had sought to assassinate the
premier.
Lord
Palmerston
In 1816
David Davies, a mentally-ill lieutenant, amputated part of his own
genitalia. He sought a full military
pension. This was not forthcoming. He blamed Lord Palmerston (d.1865), the
Secretary at War, for this. In 1818 he
tried to kill the politician. The peer
was only grazed by the bullet.
Palmerston appreciated that the man's actions had been caused by his
insanity and paid for his defence.
Davies was committed to Bedlam.
In 1821 he wrote to Palmerston to thank him for his conduct in the
matter.
Spencer
Perceval
The
politician Spencer Perceval was appointed as Prime Minister in 1809. Two years later he was assassinated by John
Bellingham, a bankrupt who blamed his predicament upon the premier.
Bellingham
spent several weeks in London preparing for the attack. He had a tailor alter his jacket so that it
could conceal the pistol. He visited the
Palace of Westminster several times to ensure that he knew what Perceval looked
like.
Having
discharged the shot Bellingham slumped down on a bench and waited to be
apprehended. When he was taken, he said
I am sorry for it. I am the unfortunate
man. The event triggered a series of
riots in London. The Cabinet was
concerned that these might presage a revolution. Therefore, to try to stop news of these
spreading it ordered that no mail coaches should leave the metropolis.
Bellingham
was insane. Despite the existence of the
Criminal Lunatics 1800 Act, he was convicted of murder and hanged.
Location:
St Stephen's Hall, Parliament Square, SW1A 0AA.
The site of Perceval's assassination. (purple, blue)
60
Lincoln's Inn Fields, WC2A 3LJ.
Perceval's townhouse.
State Servants
Sir
Michael Dwyer
A
Gandhi-ist rally. The Amritsar Massacre
in 1919. Sir Michael Dwyer, the
Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, was not present. However, the following day he ordered the
deployment of R.A.F. planes against what he took to be a mob. Udham Singh held Dwyer to have been
responsible. He vowed to avenge those
who had been slain by killing the official.
Over the next two decades he travelled widely and associated himself
with a variety of groups whom he believed might be able to further him in
achieving his aim.
On 13
March 1940 Sir Michael was one of the speakers at a public meeting that was
held at Caxton Hall. Following its end
Singh walked up to the knight. His
demeanour was friendly. He took out a
gun and shot the man twice through the heart.
He also tried to kill Sir Louis Dane, Lord Lamington, and Lord Zetland
but failed to do so because he had the wrong types of bullets for his gun. Initially, he declared himself to be Ram
Mohammad Singh Azad, an alias that sought to convey that he was acting in the interests
of the Hindu, Sikh, and Moslem communities.
Following his conviction, he was hung in Pentonville Prison and his
corpse was buried within the grounds. It
was placed between those of Dr Crippen and Sir Roger Casement.
In 1974
the corpse was exhumed and returned to India.
There it was toured for several weeks before being cremated. The ashes were distributed to members of the
Hindu, Sikh, and Moslem communities.
Location:
Caxton Hall, 10 Caxton Street, SW1H 0AQ (blue, yellow)
Pentonville
Prison, Caledonian Road, N7 8TT
Sir
Henry Wilson
1922. Killing of Sir Henry Wilson.
Location:
36 Eaton Place, SW1X 8AL (blue, red)
David
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