Death squad
Polish Voluntary II Death Squad in Lviv 1920A
death squad is an
armed squad that conducts
extrajudicial killings, and
forced disappearances of persons for the purposes of political repression, genocide, or revolutionary terror. These killings are often conducted in ways meant
to ensure the secrecy of the killers' identities, so as to avoid accountability.
Death squads are often,
but not exclusively, associated, with
police states,
one party states, or
military dictatorships. It is not unheard of, however, for
democratic governments to form death squads during a state of emergency and then disband them once the crisis passes.
Death squads may have the support of domestic or foreign Governments (
see state terrorism). They may comprise
a secret police force,
paramilitary groups, or
government soldiers and
policemen.
They may also be organized as vigilantes.
When
death squads are not controlled by the State, they may consist of
insurgent forces or
organized crime.
Extrajudicial killings and
death squads are historically prevalent in
Iraq,
El Salvador,
Afghanistan,
Bangladesh,
Pakistan,
Sri Lanka, several nations or regions in
Equatorial Africa,
Jamaica, many parts of
South America,
Uzbekistan, parts of
Thailand and in
the Philippines.
Execution of Polish civilians by German SS Einsatz Commando's, the death squads of the Nazi regime
The Salvadorean units frequently torture and sometimes kill Salvadorean citizens - apparently with the knowledge of their US mentors.
All over the world Death Squads have been used to suppress revolutionary movements.HistoryAlthough the term "
death squad" did not rise to notoriety until the activities of such groups in
Central and South America during
the 1970s and 1980s became widely known,
death squads have been employed under different guises throughout history. Apparently, the term was first used by the fascist
Iron Guard in
Romania. It officially installed Iron guard
death squads in
1936 to kill political enemies. the same happend in Hungary where the Arrow Cross men terrorized opponents and jews. It was also used during
the Battle of Algiers by
Paul Aussaresses.
One of the earliest cases of
extrajudicial killings was in
Weimar Germany.
The Iron Guard in Romania
Jewish victims of Arrow Cross men in the court of the Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest
Cold war usageIn Southeast Asia, extrajudicial killings were conducted by both sides during the
Vietnam War.
Nguyễn Văn Lém (referred to as
Captain Bay Lop) (died 1 February 1968 in Saigon), a member of
the Viet Cong, commanded a death squad targeting
South Vietnamese policemen and their families during the
Tet Offensive in
Saigon. On
February 1,
1968,
Captain Bay Lop was arrested by
South Vietnamese police while dumping the bodies of his unit's victims.
Captain Bay Lop was then shot in the head by South Vietnamese Police Major General
Nguyễn Ngọc Loan. A photograph taken of the event by American reporter
Eddie Adams horrified people throughout the Western World and contributed to
the anti-Vietnam War movement.
Nguyễn Văn Lém, a member of the Viet Cong, shot in the head by South Vietnamese Police Major General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan on 1 February 1968 in SaigonDuring the 1960s and throughout the 1970s, death squads were used against
the Viet Cong cadre. See also Phoenix Program (also known as
Phung Hoang).
The Viet Cong extensively used death squads against civilians and government officials.
In
Latin America, death squads appeared first in
Brazil where a group called
Esquadrão da Morte (literally "
Death Squad") emerged in the 1960s; they subsequently spread to
Argentina and
Chile in
the 1970s, and were later used in
Central America during
the 1980s.
Argentina used
extrajudicial killings as way of
crushing the liberal and
communist opposition to the military junta during the '
Dirty war' of
the 1970s. For example,
Alianza Anticomunista Argentina was a far-right
death squad mainly active during the "
Dirty War".
The Chilean military regime of 1973–1990 also committed such killings. See
Operation Condor for examples.
During
the Salvadoran civil war,
death squads achieved notoriety on
March 24, 1980, when a sniper assassinated
Archbishop Óscar Romero as he said Mass inside a convent chapel. In
December 1980, three American nuns,
Ita Ford,
Dorothy Kazel, and
Maura Clarke, and a lay worker,
Jean Donovan, were gang raped and murdered by
a military unit later found to have been acting on specific orders.
Archbishop Óscar Romero after his assassination by a death squad
The bodies of the murdered American nuns and lay worker in San Salvador
Portraits of the four nunsDeath squads were instrumental in killing hundreds of real and suspected
Communists.
Priests who were spreading
Liberation Theology, such as Father
Rutilio Grande, were often targeted as well. The murderers were found to have been
soldiers of the Salvadoran military, which was receiving
U.S. funding and
military advisors during
the Carter administration, these events prompted
outrage in the U.S. and led to
a temporary cutoff in military aid from
the Reagan administration, although
Death Squad activity stretched well into
the Reagan years (1981–1989) as well.
Honduras also had
death squads active through
the 1980s, the most notorious of which was
Battalion 316.
Hundreds of people, teachers, politicians, and union bosses were assassinated by government-backed forces.
Battalion 316 received substantial support and training from
the United States Central Intelligence Agency.
Human rights abuses are common place in Honduras, a country with a history of death squad activityRecent useAs of
2010,
death squads have continued to be active in several locations, including
Chechnya,
Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Colombia, Iraq, and
Sudan, among others.
Picture taken 13 February 2007 shows soldiers of the Russian special forces searching a battle-ground site near the village of Ishkhoi-Yurt in Chechnya.United States of AmericaDuring the California Gold Rush, the State Government between 1850 and 1859 financed and organized militias to hunt down and murder Native Americans in the state. Between 1850 and 1852 the state appropriated almost one million dollars for the activities of these militias, and between 1854 and 1859 the state appropriated almost 500,000 dollars for these purposes, almost half of which was reimbursed by the federal government. These death squads were part of the reduction of the indigenous population of California from 150,000 in 1848 to 15,000 in 1900. Some scholars contend that the state-financement of these militias, as well as the US government's role in other massacres in California, such as the Clear Lake Massacre and the Yontoket Massacre, in which up to 400 or more natives were killed in each massacre, constitutes acts of genocide against the native peoples of California.
Beginning in
the 1850s,
Pro-Slavery Bushwhackers and
Anti-Slavery Jayhawkers waged war against each other in
the Kansas Territory. Due to the horrific atrocities which both sides committed against civilians, the Territory was dubbed, "
Bleeding Kansas." After the
American Civil War began, the bloodshed continued.
The most infamous atrocity committed in the Kansas Territory during the American Civil War remains
the Lawrence Massacre. In this incident, a group of
Bushwhackers led by
William Clarke Quantrill and
Bloody Bill Anderson burned down
the Pro-Union settlement of
Lawrence,
Kansas and
murdered 150 unarmed men and boys.
The Lawrence Massacre in KansasDue to this and other atrocities,
Quantrill's Raiders were denied amnesty after the cessation of hostilities in 1865. As a result, several
Quantrill veterans refused to lay down their arms. Among them were the
James-Younger Gang, which continued
a campaign of armed robbery and
assassination for nearly two decades after
the end of the Civil War.
Also during Reconstruction, embittered Confederate war veterans formed
the Ku Klux Klan and several similar
vigilante organizations throughout
the American South.
The Klan and its counterparts routinely shot and lynched African-Americans, northern carpetbaggers, and Southern "
scalawags", who were regarded as
having betrayed the Confederacy. This was often with the unofficial support of
the U.S. Democratic Party leadership. Historian
Bruce B. Campbell has called
the KKK, "
one of the first proto-death squads." Campbell alleges that the difference with modern death-squads was that
the Ku Klux Klan was composed of loyalists of a defeated regime rather than the ruling governmental entity. "
Otherwise, in its murderous intent, links to private elite interests, and covert nature, it very closely resembles modern death squads."
Ultimately, U.S. President
Ulysses Simpson Grant declared a state of emergency in the American South and gave
the United States Army power to break
the Klan. Suspected Klansmen were tried before military tribunals and hanged.
In
1915,
D.W. Griffith's film
The Birth of a Nation romanticized
the K.K.K. and led directly to its refoundation at a conference at
Stone Mountain,
Georgia. Within short order,
the Klan contained chapters not only in
the American South, but also in
Michigan,
Minnesota,
Indiana, and
Illinois.
Unlike its counterpart after
the American Civil War, the re-constituted
K.K.K. professes to despise not only
non-Whites, but also "
White Ethnic"
Americans,
Jews, and
Roman Catholics. Among the most famous victims of the refounded
K.K.K. are
Father James Coyle,
Medgar Evars,
James Chaney,
Andrew Goodman, and
Michael Schwerner. (see also 16th Street Baptist Church bombing).
A Salon.com post by
Greg Grandin accuses
United States of training and setting up
death squads in
Latin America. The United States Army School of the Americas in Georgia has been accused by various activist organizations of having trained "
500 of the worst human rights abusers in the hemisphere".
U.S. intelligence made extensive use of targeted killings as part of the Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War. It is estimated that as many as 26,000 alleged
Viet Cong were killed during this program.
MexicoFor more than seven decades following
the Mexican Revolution, the Mexican State was a one party state ruled by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). During this era, death squad tactics were routinely used against suspected enemies of the state.
During the 1920s and '30s, the PRI's founder, President
Plutarco Elías Calles, used
death squads against
Mexico's Roman Catholic majority. Calles explained his reasons in a private telegram to the Mexican Ambassador to the French Republic,
Alberto José Pani Arteaga. "...
Catholic Church in Mexico is a political movement, and must be eliminated in order to proceed with a Socialist government free of religious hypnotism which fools the people... within one year without the sacraments, the people will forget the faith..."
Calles and his adherents used
the Mexican Army and
police, as well as paramilitary forces like
the Red Shirts, to abduct, torture, and execute priests, nuns, and actively religious laity.
Mexican Catholics were also routinely hanged from telegraph poles along the railroad lines.
Prominent victims of the Mexican State's campaign against Catholicism include the teenager Jose Sanchez del Rio, the Jesuit priest Father Miguel Pro, and the Christian Pacifist Anacleto González Flores. (see also Saints of the Cristero War).
In response, an armed revolt against the Mexican State,
the Cristero War, began in
1927. Composed largely of
peasant volunteers and commanded by retired
General Enrique Gorostieta Velarde, the
Cristeros were also responsible for
atrocities. Among them were the assassination of former
Mexican President Alvaro Obregon, train robberies, and violent attacks against rural teachers. The uprising largely ended after
the Holy See and
the Mexican State negotiated a compromise agreement. Refusing to lay down his arms despite offers of amnesty,
General Gorostieta was killed in action by
the Mexican Army in Jalisco on
2 June 1929. Following the cessation of hostilities,
more than 5,000 Cristeros were summarily executed by Mexican security forces. The events of
the Cristero War are depicted in the 2012 film
For Greater Glory.
During the
1960s,
'70s,
80s, and
'90s,
death squads continued to be used
against anti-PRI activists, both
Marxists and
social conservatives. One example of this is the
1968 Tlatelolco massacre, in which
an anti-regime protest rally was attacked by security forces in
Mexico City.
The Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City in 1968Allegations have been made by both journalists and American law enforcement of collusion between
senior PRI statesmen and
the Mexican drug cartels. It has even been alleged that, under PRI rule, no drug traffickers were ever successful without the permission of the Mexican State. If the same drug trafficker fell from favor, however, Mexican law enforcement would be ordered to move against their operation, as happened to
Pablo Acosta Villarreal in
1987.
By the early
1990s,
the PRI's corruption became so pervasive that
Juarez Cartel boss Amado Carillo Fuentes was even able
to purchase a window in Mexico's air defense system. During this period,
his airplanes were permitted to smuggle narcotics into the United States without the interference of
the Mexican Air Force. As a result,
Carillo Fuentes became known as "
The Lord of the Skies."
It is believed by
American and
Mexican investigators that
the PRI would also
use the cartels to committ assassinations which were too sensitive to be traced back to the ruling party. One murder believed to be an example of this is
the 1993 murder of Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo.
The PRI also used
death squad tactics against
the Zapatista guerilla movement in
the Yucatán. In
1997, forty-five people were killed by
Mexican security forces in
Chenalho,
Chiapas.
In
2000, however,
the PRI was peacefully voted from power.
FranceThe French military used
death squads during
the Algerian War (
1954–1962).
United Kingdom (UK)During the Irish war of independence in 1916–21,
the British Cabinet of
David Lloyd George organised several
assassination squads. Known by their mixture of police and military uniforms, they were dubbed
the Black and Tans and
the Auxiliary Division. In
1920 alone
the Royal Irish Constabulary Reserve Force murdered
the mayors of
Limerick and
Cork cities. In
Limerick,
the replacement mayor was also murdered, while in
Cork,
the new mayor died after a 74-day hunger strike.
In
Northern Ireland, various
republican and
loyalist paramilitary groups and
members of the British military and
the Royal Ulster Constabulary killed without lawful excuse during The Troubles. During the 30 years of the The Troubles in Northern Ireland,
republican and
loyalist paramilitary groups organised
dedicated death squads. Notable cases include
the Provisional IRA Internal Security Unit, commonly known as "
the nutting squad", which carried out the killing of
suspected informers and "
collaborators" with
the British security forces and the case of
Brian Nelson, who was simultaneously
an Ulster Defence Association terrorist and
an informant for the British Army's Intelligence Corps. In
1992,
Nelson pled guilty to a total of
20 charges, including
5 sectarian murders.
GermanyWeimar GermanyDeath squads first appeared in
Germany following
the end of the First World War and the overthrow of
the House of Hohenzollern. In order to prevent a
coup d'etat by
Soviet-backed German Communists,
the SPD-dominated government of the Weimar Republic declared
a state of emergency and ordered the recruitment of war veterans into militias called
the Freikorps. Although officially answering to Defense Minister
Gustav Noske, the
Freikorps tended to be drunken, trigger happy, and loyal only to their own commanders. However, they were instrumental in
the defeat of the 1919 Spartacist Uprising and
the annexation of the Bavarian Soviet Republic.
The most famous victims of the Freikorps were of Communist leaders
Karl Liebknecht and
Rosa Luxemburg, who were captured after
the Spartacist Uprising and
shot without trial. After
the Freikorps units turned against
the Republic in
the monarchist Kapp Putsch, many of the leaders were forced to flee abroad and the units were largely disbanded.
Some
Freikorps veterans drifted into the ultra-nationalist Organisation
Consul, which regarded
the 1918 Armistice and
the Versailles Treaty as
treasonous and
assassinated politicians associated with them. Among their victims were
Matthias Erzberger and
Walter Rathenau, both of whom were cabinet ministers in
the Weimar regime.
Matthias Erzberger
Walter RathenauIn addition, the city of
Munich also remained a headquarters of
Russian White émigré hit teams, which targeted
those believed to have betrayed the Tsar. Their most infamous operation remains
the 1922 attempt on the life of Russian Provisional Government statesman Pavel Miliukov in
Berlin. When newspaper publisher
Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov attempted to shield the intended victim, he was fatally shot by assassin
Piotr Shabelsky-Bork.
During the same era,
the Communist Party of Germany also operated
assassination squads of their own. Titled,
the Rotfrontkämpferbund they carried out
assassinations of carefully selected individuals from
the Weimar regime as well as
rival political parties. The most infamous operation of
Weimar-era Communist death squads remains
the 1931 slayings of
Berlin police Captains Paul Anlauf and
Franz Lenck. Those involved in the ambush either fled to
the Soviet Union or were arrested and prosecuted. Among those to receive the death penalty was
Max Matern, who was later glorified as a martyr by
the East German State. The last surviving conspirator,
former East German secret police head Erich Mielke, was belatedly
tried and
convicted for the murders in
1993. The evidence needed to successfully prosecute him had been found in his personal safe after German reunification.
the Rotfrontkämpferbund
Former East German secret police head Erich Mielke
funeral march for the killed police officers Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck in Berlin in 1931. 
The funeral of the murdered police officers Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck. In front Magnus Heimannsberg, the commander of the Berlin Schutzpolizei during the Weimar Republic, Berlin's Police President Albert Grzesinski and Bernhard Weiß, German lawyer and Vice President of the Berlin police during the Weimar Republic.Nazi GermanyBetween
1933 and
1945,
Germany was a
one party state ruled by
the NSDAP and its leader,
Adolf Hitler. During this period,
the Nazis made extensive use of death squads and targeted killings.
In
1934,
Hitler ordered
the extrajudicial killings of Ernst Roehm and
all members of the Sturmabteilung who remained loyal to him. Simultaneously,
Hitler also ordered
a mass purge of the German armed forces,
targeting officers who, like
General Kurt von Schleicher, had opposed
his drive for absolute power. These massacres have gone down in history as, "
The Night of the Long Knives."
Following the invasion of
the Soviet Union in
1941, the German military was followed by four travelling
death squads called
Einsatzgruppen (Einsatzgruppe-A through D) to
hunt down and kill Jews,
Communists and
other so-called undesirables in the occupied areas. This was
the first of the massacres that made up the Holocaust.
Typically, the victims, who included women and children, were forcibly marched from their homes to open graves or ravines before being shot. Many others suffocated in specially designed poison trucks called gas vans.
Between 1941 and 1944, the Einsatzgruppen killed about 1.2 million Soviet Jews, as well as tens of thousands of suspected political dissidents, most of the Polish upper class and intelligentsia,
POWs, and
uncounted numbers of Romany.
Four men with SS-Einsatzgruppe A execute four Jews in the vicinity of Kovno, Lithuania, as spectators look on.
A Soviet civilian about to be executed at Preili, Latvia.Another use of death squad tactics in Nazi Germany took place after the failure of the July 20th Plot, which had aimed to assassinate Hitler and dismantle the Nazi Party. More tha 4,000 members and sympathisers of the German Resistance and their families were either killed out right or subjected to
judicial murder by
Judge Roland Freisler of
the People's Court. Those whom
Freisler sentenced to death were
routinely hanged from piano wire nooses within hours of their trials.
These tactics ended only with the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945.
East GermanyBetween the end of
World War II and
1989,
East Germany was a
one party state under
the Socialist Unity Party and its
secret police,
the Stasi. During these years, kangaroo courts and cavalier use of the death penalty were routinely used against suspected enemies of the State. In order to prevent East German citizens from defecting to West Germany,
orders were issued to border guards to shoot suspected defectors on sight.
During the 1980s, the Stasi carried out a mission to hunt down and assassinate West Germans who were suspected of smuggling East Germans.
The
Stasi also operated
terrorist training camps for
Left Wing terrorist organizations from
Africa,
Europe, and
Latin America. Most infamous was their involvement in training the West German
Red Army Faction. At these camps,
R.A.F. members were instructed in the use of military hardware and assisted in
planning attacks on West German politicians,
police officers,
union officials, and
businessmen.
R.A.F. members who chose to retire from the armed struggle were relocated to East Germany and given new identities. Following German Reunification, surviving
R.A.F. veterans in the former
East Germany were
rounded up and prosecuted for their past crimes. In
1996, the
R.A.F. released a statement which announced that it was disbanding.
During
the Cold War,
death squads associated with t
he Libyan embassy in East Berlin plotted
murders of West German and
American targets. According to
John O. Koehler, this was done with the full knowledge of the East German secret police or Stasi.
Federal Republic of GermanyFollowing German reunification,
death squads linked to
foreign intelligence services have continued to operate in
Germany. The most infamous example of this remains
the 1992 Mykonos restaurant assassinations, in which
a group of anti-Islamist Iranians were fatally machined gunned in a
Greek restaurant in
Berlin. A German court ultimately convicted the assassins and exposed the involvement of
intelligence services of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The murder and subsequent trial has been publicized in the nonfiction bestseller The Assassins of the Turquois Palace by Roya Hakakian.
IraqIraq was formed by
the British from
three provinces of the Ottoman Empire following
the empire's breakup after
World War I. Its population is overwhelming
Muslims but divided into
Shia and
Sunni Arabs and with
a Kurdish minority in the north. The new state leadership in the capital of
Baghdad was composed mostly of
the old Sunni Arab elite.
After
Saddam was overthrown by
the UK-US invasion in
2003 the
secular socialist Baathist leadership were replaced with a
provisional and later
constitutional government that included leadership roles for
the Shia and
Kurds. This paralleled the development of
ethnic militias by the
Shia,
Sunni, and
the Kurdish Peshmerga.
Iraqi anti-government gunmen from Sunni tribes in Anbar province march during a protest in Ramadi on April 26, 2013
Above: Members of the Mahdi Army. Tensions exist between the two primary Shia militias known as the Badr Brigade and the Mahdi Army as each struggles for political dominance. The Badr Brigade is the paramilitary force of the largest Shia political bloc, the Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq. The Mahdi Army is the paramilitary force of the Sadrists, headed by Moqtada al-Sadr. The Iraqi security forces are heavily infiltrated by both, with each having varying amounts of control in different areas. Below: A scene from Sadr City. Al-Sadr has built his following from millions of the poorest Iraqis, and his organization has provided food, money and medical care when none else was available.
Iranian-backed Badr Brigades fighters in Darbandekhan, Iraq. 
Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in Northern-IraqDuring the course of
the Iraq War the country has increasingly become
divided into three zones: (
1) a
Kurdish ethnic zone to the north, (
2) a
Sunni center and (
3)
the Shia ethnic zone to the south.
While
all three groups have operated
death squads, in
the national capital of Baghdad some members of
the now Shia police department and
army formed unofficial, unsanctioned, but
long tolerated death squads. They possibly have
links to the Interior Ministry and are popularly known as the '
black crows'.
These groups operated night or day.
They usually arrested people, then either torture or killed them.
The victims of these attacks were predominantly young males who had probably been suspected of being members of the Sunni insurgency. Agitators such as
Abdul Razaq al-Na'as,
Dr. Abdullateef al-Mayah, and
Dr. Wissam Al-Hashimi have also been killed.
Women and children have also been arrested and or killed. Some of these killings have also been simple
robberies or
other criminal activities.
Dr. Wissam Al Hashimi was kidnapped and murdered in August 2005.”He was kidnapped on his way to work on 24 August 2005 and his body riddled with two bullets was found 2 weeks later in a Baghdad hospital. The notes of his latest study were stolen.”A feature in a
May 2005 issue of the magazine of
The New York Times accused
the U.S. military of modelling the "
Wolf Brigade",
the Iraqi interior ministry police commandos, on the
death squads used in
the 1980s to crush
the Marxist insurgency in
El Salvador.
Members of the Wolf Brigade patrol Baghdad in 2005.In
2004, the US dispatched
James Steele as an envoy and special training adviser to
the Iraqi Special Police Commandos who were later accused of
torture and
death squad activities.
Steele had served in
El Salvador in the
1980s, where he helped
train government units involved in
human rights violations death squads in
their war against the
Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (in Spanish:
Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional,
FMLN), an umbrella group from the left-wing guerilla organizations:
the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación Farabundo Martí (
FPL),
Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (
ERP), the
Resistencia Nacional (
RN), the
Partido Comunista Salvadoreño (
PCS) and
the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores Centroamericanos (
PRTC).
USA Col. James Steele, in younger days. An eager henchman for the world oligarchy.
Members of an Iraqi Shia militia and death squad
