When Governments Order Assassinations

Targeted assassination of Iranian leaders is a tactical hallmark of the Israeli-American war on the Islamic Republic, to the dismay of Tehran’s allies. The Kremlin calls it “murder.” Turkey’s foreign minister denounces the deaths as “political assassinations” and “truly illegal activities.” These claims don’t hold much legal water. Could the case of Count Étienne Davignon, though, give officials at Jerusalem and Washington pause? A Belgian court is ordering that the count, age 93, stand trial for his alleged role in the death in 1961 of the former prime minister of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba. Mr. Davignon, the Financial Times reports, is the lone survivor of 10 Belgians who have been implicated in Lumumba’s death. The FT characterizes the “assassination of Congo’s first democratically elected prime minister” as “a defining moment of the Cold War.”As the Congo, long a Belgian colony, became an independent nation, the Third World was emerging as an arena in which the West and the Soviets vied for influence. Lumumba’s appeal to Moscow for military aid led President Eisenhower to seek Lumumba’s removal from power. Lumumba was ousted in a coup, and his shooting in January 1961 was found to have taken place “with the support of the Belgian government,” the FT reports.At that time Mr. Davignon was but an intern, the FT says, in the African affairs division of Belgium’s foreign ministry. He later went on to serve as a European Union commissioner for the internal market and industry. He now faces charges of participating in “war crimes relating to the unlawful detention” or “transfer of a person protected by the Geneva conventions” and depriving Lumumba “of the right to fair and impartial trial,” according to prosecutors.The death of Lumumba, though, differs from the American-Israeli campaign in Iran, which, as our Benny Avni reports, is guided by the rules of war. Even the American Civil Liberties Union acknowledges the legitimacy in this scenario of using “lethal force“ against “individuals who are directly participating in hostilities against the United States.” In the past, Mr. Avni reports, that logic led presidents “mostly to kill non-state combatants.”Feature, say, President Obama’s deployment of drones during the war on terror to target Islamic State officials. Mr. Obama “ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden, while the Al Qaeda chief’s successor, Ayman Zawahiri, was killed under President Biden,” Mr. Avni notes. President Trump, during his first term, “defied detractors by ordering the killing of General Qassem Soleimani,” Mr. Avni reports.Today’s assassinations of Iran’s leaders seems to take this tactic to a new level. The defense minister at Jerusalem, Israel Katz, says “no one in Iran has immunity, everyone is a target.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu characterizes the moves as a way to enable Iranians to overthrow the mullahs’ regime. American and Israeli officials, Mr. Avni reports, “cite the principle of distinction,” a legal principle “that separates civilians and military targets.”Could that rationale, some 65 years from now, spare some Israeli or American intern from being put in the dock for, say, the ayatollah’s death? Which brings us back to Mr. Davignon. The grandson of the Congolese premier, Mehdi Lumumba, hailed the news that the count would be facing trial. “Belgium is finally confronting its history,” he said. Even putting aside legal questions, it calls to mind Faulkner’s reflection that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

When Governments Order Assassinations

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