Death Squad

A death squad is an armed group whose primary activity is carrying out extrajudicial killings or forced disappearances as part of political repression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or revolutionary terror. Except in rare cases in which they are formed by an insurgency, domestic or foreign governments actively participate in, support, or ignore the death squad's activities. Death squads are distinct from assassination from their permanent organization and the larger number of victims (typically thousands or more) who may not be prominent individuals. Other violence, such as rape, torture, arson, or bombings may be carried out alongside murders. They may comprise a secret police force, paramilitary militia groups, government soldiers, policemen, or combinations thereof. They may also be organized as vigilantes, bounty hunters, mercenaries, or contract killers. When death squads are not controlled by the state, they may consist of insurgent forces or organized crime, such as the ones used by cartels.

History

Although the term "death squad" did not rise to notoriety until the activities of such groups became widely known in Central and South America during the 1970s and 80s, death squads have been employed under different guises throughout history. The term was first used by the fascist Iron Guard in Romania. It officially installed Iron Guard death squads in 1936 in order to kill political enemies. It was also used during the Battle of Algiers by Paul Aussaresses.

Cold War usage

In Latin America, death squads first appeared 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 they were later used in Central America during the 1980s. Argentina used extrajudicial killings as a 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 24 March 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. Death 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 at the end of his presidency. 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 the army unit Battalion 316. Hundreds of people, teachers, politicians, and union leaders were assassinated by government-backed forces. Battalion 316 received substantial training from the United States Central Intelligence Agency.

In Southeast Asia, extrajudicial killings were conducted by both sides during the Vietnam War.

After being caught dumping the bodies of his victims during the Tet Offensive in Saigon, Nguyễn Văn Lém, the commander of a Viet Cong unit tasked with murdering South Vietnamese police officers and their families, was extrajudicially executed on camera by Police General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan on 1 February 1968.

Recent use

, death squads have continued to be active in several locations, including Chechnya, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Nigeria, Colombia, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and the Philippines, among others.

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian soldiers captured by the Ukrainian army stated that Russian death squads have been activated by Vladimir Putin to kill soldiers that returned after entering Ukraine. When contacting their parents, they learnt that they have started making preparations for the soldier's funeral. As a result, Russian soldiers who decide not to fight chose to surrender rather than desert.

By continent

Africa

Egypt

The Iron Guard of Egypt was a pro-palace political movement or a secret palace organization of the Kingdom of Egypt which assassinated Farouk of Egypt's enemies or a secret unit with a licence to kill, which was believed to personally take orders from Farouk. It was involved in several deadly incidents.

Ivory Coast

Death squads are reportedly active in this country.

This has been condemned by the US but appears to be difficult to stop. Moreover, there is no proof as to whom is behind the killings.

In an interview with the Pan-African magazine "Jeune Afrique", Laurent Gbagbo, 1 September 2007 According to the NGO ''Memoria y Justicia'', the squad killed 26 in the South and 71 in the North, making a total of 97 victims.Caravan of Death
, ''Memoria y Justicia'' Augusto Pinochet was indicted in December 2002 in this case, but he died four years later without having been convicted. The trial, however, is on-going , other militaries and a former military chaplain having been indicted in this case.
On 28 November 2006, Víctor Montiglio, charged of this case, ordered Pinochet's house arrest According to the Chilean Government's own Truth and Reconciliation (Rettig) report, 2,279 people were killed in the operations of Pinochet's regime. In June 1999, judge Juan Guzmán Tapia ordered the arrest of five retired generals.

Colombia

The United States supported death squads in Colombia, El Salvador and Guatemala during the 1980s. In 1993, Amnesty International reported that clandestine military units began covertly operating as death squads in 1978. According to the report, throughout the 1980s political killings rose to a peak of 3,500 in 1988, averaging some 1,500 victims per year since then, and "over 1,500 civilians are also believed to have "disappeared" since 1978." The AUC, formed in 1997, was the most prominent paramilitary group.

According to a 2014 report published by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Buenaventura, a port town in Colombia, "entire neighborhoods were dominated by powerful paramilitary successor groups" HRW reports that the groups "restrict residents' movements, recruit their children, extort businesses, and routinely engage in horrific acts of violence against anyone who defies their will." It is reported that scores of people have been "disappeared" from the town over the years. Bodies are dismembered before they are disposed of and residents have reported the existence of ''casas de pique'', "chop-up houses" where people are slaughtered. Many residents have fled and are considered to have been "forcibly displaced": 22,028 residents fled in 2011, 15,191 in 2012, and 13,468 between January and October 2013.

In Colombia, the terms "death squads", "paramilitaries" or "self-defense groups" have been used interchangeably and otherwise, referring to either a single phenomenon, also known as paramilitarism, or to different but related aspects of the same. There are reports that Los Pepes, the death squad led by brothers Fidel and Carlos Castaño, had ties to some members of the Colombian National Police, especially the Search Bloc (Bloque de Búsqueda) unit.

A report from the country's public prosecutors office at the end of 2009 reported the number of 28,000 disappeared by paramilitary and guerrilla groups. only 300 corpses were identified and 600 in 2009. According to the prosecutor's office, it will take many more years before all the bodies recovered can be identified.

At least 40% of the national legislature are said to have ties to paramilitary groups. In August 2018, prosecutors in Colombia charged 13 Chiquita brands with supporting the right wing death squad that killed hundreds in the Urabá Antioquia region between 1996 and 2004. Salvatore Mancuso, a jailed paramilitary leader, has accused Del Monte, Dole and Chiquita of funding right wing death squads. Chiquita was fined $25 million after admitting they had paid $1.7 million to paramilitaries over six years; the reason for the payments remains a matter of dispute, with Chiquita claiming the money was routine extortion money paid to paramilitary groups to protect workers. Activists, on the other hand, insist that a portion of the money paid by Chiquita was used to finance political assassinations.

Peru

Peruvian government death squads carried out massacres against radicals and civilians in their fight against Shining Path and Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.

Venezuela

In its 2002 and 2003 world reports, Human Rights Watch reported the existence of death squads in several Venezuelan states, involving members of the local police, the DISIP and the National Guard. These groups were responsible for the extrajudicial killings of civilians and wanted or alleged criminals, including street criminals, looters and drug users.

In 2019, amid the Crisis in Bolivarian Venezuela, the government of Nicolás Maduro was accused by a UN human rights report of using death squads to conduct thousands of extrajudicial executions. The report relayed a multitude of eyewitness accounts, describing the government's Special Action Forces (FAES) frequently arriving at homes in unmarked vehicles, executing male suspects on the spot, then planting drugs or weapons on the corpse to make it appear the victim died resisting arrest. According to the report, the executions were part of a campaign aimed at "neutralizing, repressing and criminalizing political opponents and people critical of the government". The Maduro government condemned the report as "openly biased".

Asia

Bangladesh

In contemporary times, the Bangladeshi "Rapid Action Battalion" has been criticized by rights groups for its use of extrajudicial killings. In addition, there have been many reports of torture in connection with the battalion's activities. Several battalion members have been accused of murder and obstruction of justice during the Narayanganj Seven murder. They've been known to kill civilian suspects for the explicit purpose of avoiding trials. They have also been accused of carrying out a campaign of forced disappearances.

Cambodia

The Khmer Rouge began employing death squads to purge Cambodia of non-communists after taking over the country in 1975. They rounded up their victims, questioned them and then took them out to killing fields.

India

The secret killings of Assam (1998–2001) was probably the darkest chapter in Assam's political history when relatives, friends, sympathisers of United Liberation Front of Asom insurgents were systematically killed by unknown assailants. These extrajudicial murders happened in Assam between 1998 and 2001. These extrajudicial killings were conducted by the Government of Assam using SULFA members and the security forces in the name of counter-insurgency operations. The victims of these killings were relatives, friends and colleagues of ULFA militants. The most apparent justification for the whole exercise was that it was a tit-for-tat response to the ULFA-sponsored terrorism, specially the killings of their old comrades—the SULFAs.

Indonesia

During the transition to the New Order in 1965–1966, with the backing of the United States government and its Western allies, the Indonesian National Armed Forces and right-wing paramilitary death squads massacred hundreds of thousands of leftists and those believed tied to the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) after a failed coup attempt which was blamed on the Communists. At least 400,000 to 500,000 people, perhaps as many as 3 million, were killed over a period of several months, with thousands more being interred in prisons and concentration camps under extremely inhumane conditions. The violence culminated in the fall of the "guided democracy" regime under President Sukarno and the commencement of Suharto's thirty-year authoritarian reign.

Iran

Under the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1941–1979) the SAVAK (Security and Intelligence Service) was founded. During the 1960s and 70s, it was accused of using death squads. After the Islamic Revolution overthrew the Shah, Amnesty International continued to complain of human rights abuses in Iran. Suspected foes of the Ayatollah Khomeini, were imprisoned, tortured, tried by kangaroo courts, and executed. The most famous victim of the era's death squad violence remains Amir-Abbas Hoveida, a Prime Minister of Iran under the Shah. However, the same treatment was also meted out to senior officers in the Iranian military. Other cases exist of Iranian dissidents opposed to the Islamic Republic who have been tracked down and murdered abroad. One of the most notorious examples of this remains the 1992 Mykonos restaurant assassinations in Berlin, Germany.

The Iranian government's victims include civilians who have been killed by "death squads" that operate under the control of government agents but these killing operations have been denied by the Iranian government. This was particularly the case during the 1990s when more than 80 writers, translators, poets, political activists, and ordinary citizens who had been critical of the government in some way, disappeared or were found murdered. In 1983 the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) gave one of the leaders of Iran Khomeini information on Communist KGB agents in Iran. This information was almost certainly used. Later, The Iranian regime occasionally used death squads throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. However, by the 2000s, it seems to have almost if not entirely ceased its operations. This partial Westernization of the country can be seen as paralleling similar events in Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and Northern Iraq beginning in the late 1990s.

Iraq

Iraq was formed by the British Empire from three provinces of the Ottoman Empire following the empire's breakup after World War I. Its population is overwhelmingly Muslim but is divided into Shiites and Sunnis, with a Kurdish minority in the north. The new state leadership in the capital of Baghdad was formerly composed of, for the most part, the old Sunni Arab elite.

After Saddam Hussein was overthrown by the US-led invasion of Iraq 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.

During the course of the Iraq War the country has increasingly become divided into three zones: a Kurdish ethnic zone to the north, a Sunni center and 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 Iraqi Police and Iraqi 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 either by night or by day. They usually arrested people, then either tortured 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 or killed. Some of these killings have also been simple robberies or other criminal activities.

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 that were used in the 1980s to crush the Marxist insurgency in El Salvador.

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 FMLNF.

Lebanon

Death squads were active during the Lebanese Civil War from 1975 to 1990. The number of people who disappeared during the conflict is put around 17,000. Groups like Hezbollah have used death squads and elite wings to terrorize opponents and ISIS members.

Philippines

There are certain vigilante death squads that are active in the Philippines, especially in Davao City where local death squads roam around the city to hunt criminals.

After winning the Presidency in June 2016, Rodrigo Duterte had urged, "If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself as getting their parents to do it would be too painful." By March 2017, the death toll for the Philippine Drug War passed 8,000 people.

Saudi Arabia

South Korea

News reports on the use of death squads in Korea originated around the middle of the 20th century such as the Jeju Massacre and Daejeon. There were also the multiple deaths that made the news in 1980 in Gwangju.

Thailand

During the Cold War, in the short period of democracy in Thailand after the 1973 Thai popular uprising (1973–1976), three right-wing paramilitary groups, Nawaphon, Red Gaurs, and Village Scouts were founded and supported by Internal Security Operations Command and Border Patrol Police to promote national unity, loyalty to Thai royal family, and anti-communism. They were also heavily funded and backed by the United States government, and were under the patronage of the royal family themselves. Among their ranks were former soldiers, veterans of the Vietnam War, former mercenaries in Laos, and violent vocational students.

These groups were first employed to counter protests of the pro-democracy and left-wing students movement, attacking them with firearms and grenades. When the ideological conflict escalated, they started assassinating labor and peasants union officials and progressive politicians, the most famous was Dr. Boonsanong Punyodyana, the general secretary of the Socialist Party of Thailand. The conflict reached its peak with the Thammasat University massacre in 1976, which the Royal Thai Armed Forces and Royal Thai Police, supported by the three aforementioned paramilitary groups, stormed Thammasat University and shot mostly unarmed student protesters indiscriminately, resulting in at least 46 deaths. A military coup was staged later in the same day. During the military rule, the paramilitary groups' popularity diminished.

In contemporary Thailand, many extrajudicial killings occurred during the 2003 anti-drug effort of Thailand's prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra were attributed to government-sponsored death squads. Rumors still persist that there is collusion between the government, rogue military officers and radical right wing/anti-drugs death squads
siamexpats.comThailand: "The Corrupt Media Mogul v. The Crusading Journalist"
Cannabis Culture Magazine Thailand_War_on_Drugs_Turns_Murderous,_600_Killed_This_Month_--_Human_Rights_Groups_Denounce_Death_Squads,_ExecutionsThailand War on Drugs Turns Murderous, 600 Killed This Month -- Human Rights Groups Denounce Death Squads, Executions StoptheDrugWar.org">Southeast Asia: Probe into Thai Drug War Killings Getting Underway , StoptheDrugWar.org
with both Muslim and Grey Wolves was established by Colonel Alparslan Türkeş in the 1960s, it was the main Turkish nationalism, Turkish nationalist force during the Political violence in Turkey (1976–80), political violence in 1976–80 in Turkey. During this period, the organization became a "death squad" engaged in " street killings and gunbattles". According to authorities, 220 of its members carried out 694 murders of left-wing and liberal activists and intellectuals. Attacks on university students were commonplace. They killed hundreds of Alevis in the Maraş massacre of 1978 and are alleged to have been behind the Taksim Square massacre of 1977. The masterminds behind the attempt on Pope John Paul II's life in 1981 by Grey Wolves member Mehmet Ali Ağca were not identified and the organization's role remains unclear.

=Ottoman Empire

=
During the Armenian genocide, the Special Organization functioned as a death squad.

Australia

Australia has a long history of the use of death squads dating back to the earliest days of European colonisation.

In the Colony of New South Wales on December 1790, Governor Arthur Phillip ordered that "A party, consisting of two captains, two subalterns, and forty privates, with a proper number of non-commissioned officers from the garrison, with three days provisions, etc. are to be ready to march to-morrow morning at day-light, in order to bring in six of those natives who reside near the head of Botany Bay; or, if that should be found impracticable, to put that number to death." and "That we were to cut off and bring in the heads of the slain; for which purpose hatchets and bags would be furnished." Originally Phillip had settled on a dozen as an appropriate number. General Watkin Tench wrote that "we were, if practicable, to bring away two natives as prisoners; and to put to death ten." Phillip's purpose for this mission, as described by Tench, was "to strike a decisive blow, in order, at once to convince them of our superiority and to infuse an universal terror..."

In May 1795, Governor Peterson ordered a "party of corps to be sent from Parramatta, with instructions to destroy as many as they could meet with of the wood tribe ('Be-dia-gal'); and, in hope of striking terror, to erect gibbets in different places, whereupon the bodies of all they might kill were to be hung." Seven or eight Indigenous people were thought to have been killed, although no bodies were hung on gibbets, and several captives were taken including "one man, (apparently a cripple) five women and some children." One woman and her baby had both been shot though not killed. The child subsequently died. Another pregnant woman delivered her baby son who also died. Gapps writes "The fact that women and children were shot and captured certainly suggests the action was an indiscriminate surprise assault on a campsite at night, with all the hallmarks of a massacre."

In December 1795, Collins recorded that another 'armed party' was sent out. "They promptly killed four men and one woman, badly wounded a child, and took four men prisoners." Gapps writes "Once more, the shooting of women and children suggests a surprise attack on a camp, ending in a massacre."

In early 1796, Governor John Hunter gave settlers in the outlying Hawkesbury settlement militia status. At this point the Hawkesbury was effectively beyond the reach of the New South Wales Corps who had limited manpower. Hunter was at pains to state that settlers were "not to wantonly fire at, or take the lives of natives, as such act would be considered a deliberate murder." Settlers who withdrew or kept back their assistance to the militia were to be "proceeded against as persons disobeying the rules and orders of the settlement."

In 1799, Lieutenant Thomas Hobby of the New South Wales Corps led a party of soldiers and settler against Aboriginal Australians in the Hawkesbury area on the understanding that his orders were to destroy Aboriginal people "wherever they were met with", with the exception of "native children who were domesticated among the settlers." Non 'domesticated' Aboriginal children were fair game.

In May 1801, Governor King went further issuing 'shoot on sight' orders. declaring that anyone in three districts around Sydney could fire at any "bodies of natives".

In the Colony of Tasmania death squads took a number of forms. Private individuals, convicts and settlers formed vigilante squads. In 1827, Near Hadspen on the property of Thomas Beams, Aboriginal Tasmanians surrounded his hut. In response to his firing at the Aboriginal people Beams' neighbours arrived on foot and horseback. A "war party" was organised and a search conducted. At 10 o'clock at night the glow of a fire was seen and the war party surrounded the Aboriginal encampment. At 3 am fourteen muskets opened fire, the camp was rushed and eleven Aboriginal people were killed. Only one escaped.

'Roving parties' were authorised by Governor Arthur. These parties were either military patrols made up of soldiers and convict police or civilian parties made up of convicts and led by men who provided their services in return for promises of grants of land. While they were mostly ineffective, or indeed counterproductive, they did kill Aboriginal people. In one such instance in 1829, a roving party led by John Batman, using Aboriginal trackers brought from the Sydney colony, came across a large Aboriginal camp of men, women and children at night. Their approach was disturbed by the camp dogs whereupon they opened fire and rushed the camp. They captured a woman and a child but the rest fled into the darkness. The next morning Batman's party found two badly wounded men and many blood trails. The wounded men informed them that ten others had been seriously wounded and were dead or dying and that two women had also been severely wounded and had crawled away. The wounded Aboriginal men were subsequently executed by Batman.

Military units carried out attacks upon sleeping Aboriginal groups. On 6 December 1828 elements of the 40th Regiment together with two constables, Danvers and Holmes, surrounded a group of Aboriginal people during the night at Tooms Lake. In a dawn attack they killed a number of Aboriginal people variously described as 'several' or ten or sixteen. The bodies were then placed in a pile and burned.

In the northwest of Tasmania a private corporation, the Van Diemen's Land Company, modelled on the East India Company, what Adam Smith described as a "government of an exclusive company of merchants,... perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever." became a law unto itself. The company's Chief Agent, Edward Curr, was also appointed the government magistrate, making him the sole arbiter of law for 200 kilometers in any direction. Curr described his belief that "a war of extermination" was underway, and later wrote that "My whole object was to kill them, and this because my full conviction was and is that the laws of nature and God and this country all conspired to render this my duty..."

In 1828, Curr sent four shepherds along with the captain of the cutter ''Fanny'' and its crew to carry out a massacre in response to the spearing of some sheep. A resident of Curr's homestead, Rosalie Hare, described in her journal "...while we remained at Circular Head there were several accounts of considerable amounts of Natives having been shot by them (the Company's men), they wishing to extirpate them entirely, if possible. The master of the Company's cutter ''Fanny,'' assisted by four shepherds and his crew, surprised a party and killed 12". This was quickly followed by the Cape Grim Massacre where Aboriginal people collecting shellfish on the beach at the base of a cliff were shot from the high ground by the company's servants. The company also employed booby traps such as spring loaded guns and steel jawed man traps, sometimes hidden in barrels of flour.

The culmination of these death squads was 'the Black Line', a 300 kilometre wide sweep which employed more than 2000 men over almost a two-month period from the 7th of October 1830 to the 26th of November. The strategy was designed as a battue to drive the remaining Aboriginal inhabitants into a cordon where they could be captured or killed. While Governor Arthur maintained that capture was the goal, those who participated and the press had no doubt that the only realistic recourse was to kill the remaining Aboriginal people. The former Attorney General wrote publicly that they were "about to enter upon a war of extermination, for such I apprehend is the intended object of the present operations." The serving Solicitor General concurred writing "If you cannot capture them...I say boldly and broadly, exterminate."

While the Black Line was an abject failure, manned by unmotivated conscript troops and convicts, hamstrung by incompetence, lack of supplies, bad weather and poor intelligence, ultimately, it failed because there simply was no enemy to kill. A year later, when George Augustus Robinson negotiated the final surrender of the eastern tribes and led them into Hobart Town all that remained was 19 men, nine women and one child. Within a few years they too would mostly be dead, killed by white man's diseases on their Flinders Island internment camp. The more than dozen tribes of the north west suffered a similar fate, having been virtually wiped out by the Van Diemen's Land Company by 1834, and of those tribes in the north east, by 1830 there were only 74 human beings left alive. Robinson wrote that "at every boat harbour along the whole line of the coast the bones of the murdered aborigines are strewed over the face of the earth and bleaching in the sun..." By 1835 the Aboriginal Peoples of Tasmania were virtually extinct. The extirpation of each tribe a completed genocide. Today, those Tasmanians who are of Aboriginal ancestry are almost exclusively the descendants of Aboriginal women and girls taken as slaves by sealers in Bass Strait.

As the frontier in New South Wales continued to expand the Crown sought to limit the unregulated spread of settlement. In 1929, the area of land that could be legally settled was expanded to nineteen counties stretching from the Bateman's Bay in the south to Taree in the north to Bathurst and Wellington in the west. Squatters simply ran their stock well beyond the settled counties. In 1836 Governor Richard Bourke legalised this illegal fait accompli.by acknowledging squatter's rights to occupation if they paid ten pounds in annual rent. Skinner remarks that “The resulting Act (7 Wm. IV. No. 4) ''to restrain the unauthorized occupation of Crown Lands'' was equally a law to recognize and encourage legitimate grazing." Bourke mused that failing to take this land would be "a perverse rejection of the Bounty of Providence." This Bounty of Providence was, of course, Aboriginal land, and taking it necessitated violence.

Conflict came in the form of arbitrary killings, ad hoc death squads and the establishment of the Mounted Police and later the Native Police. At separation in 1859 the Native Police would become the Queensland Native Mounted Police, which would field death squads across the entire state for to following half century.

The Mounted Police were thought to have killed around 100 Aboriginal people in 1836 and another 65 in 1838. Richards writes that "...the Mounted Police exerted the Crown's monopoly over armed force on the frontier while maintaining the appearance of law. In other words, while described as a police force upholding the rule of law, the force actually resembled an army unit actively engaged with an enemy."

On 26 January 1838, on the newly expanded frontier, the New South Wales Mounted Police under Major James Nunn perpetrated a massacre of Aboriginal people south west of Moree at Waterloo Creek. This was the culmination of a two month long campaign to suppress Aboriginal resistance. At least fifty Aboriginal people were murdered. At the time the government funded missionary Lancelot Threlkeld published a report naming Nunn as a mass murdered responsible for the deaths of 200-300 Aboriginal people on the Gwydir and its tributaries.

This was followed on 10 June 1838 by the Myall Creek Massacre east of Moree, perpetrated by an ad hoc death squad composed of squatters and their stockmen. At least 28 Aboriginal people, women, children and the elderly, were shot, beheaded and dismembered before their bodies were burnt on a fire. The death squad then proceeded to another property near Inverell perpetrating a second massacre before returning to Myall Creek.

The Myall Creek Massacre became the only instance where white colonists were held accountable for mass murder. There were two trials. In the first an all white jury found them not guilty. Subsequently, seven of the original eleven defendants were re-tried on the charge of killing a child, found guilty and executed.

The Myall Creek Massacre trial was only made possible because the perpetrators had made a public resolution "to exterminate the whole race of blacks in that quarter" and some of their fellow settlers disagreed with the sentiment and informed the authorities.

In 1839, Governor George Gipps, in an attempt to rein in atrocities being committed in the colony, issued a strongly worded public proclamation pointing out the illegality of waging war against Aboriginal Peoples "As human beings partaking of our common nature -as the Aboriginal possessors of the soil from which the wealth of the country has been principally derived - and as subjects of the Queen, whose authority extends over every part of New Holland - the natives of the Colony have an equal right with the people of European origin to the protection and 'assistance of the law of England." ·
"To allow either to injure or oppress the other, or to permit the stronger to regard the weaker party as aliens with whom a war can exist, and against whom they may exercise belligerent rights, is not less inconsistent with the spirit of that Law, than it is at variance with the dictates of justice and humanity."

In response to the massacres and general lawlessness of the frontier Governor Gipps also introduced the Border Police Act "An Act further to restrain the unauthorised occupation of Crown Lands, and to provide the means of defraying the expense of the Border Police" and in 1841 a subsequent Act extended the force for another 5 years. While the Border Police, made up primarily of military convicts, proved relatively inconsequential for dealing with frontier violence, it laid the foundation for the establishment of the permanent Native Police in 1848.

In 1847/48, James Marks, a squatter whose son had been killed by Aboriginal people, possibly in response to Marks' "ruthless shooting of Aborigines" and the murder of an Aboriginal boy working for a neighbouring squatter, recruited white settlers to form a death squad. They were joined by two Constables, McGee and Hancock, on the orders of the Warialda Bench of Magistrates. Their killing spree centered on 'station blacks', Aboriginal people working for local squatters and the victims were almost exclusively women. The total number of victims is unknown but at least 47 were recorded to have been murdered.

Commissioner John Bligh wrote to the Colonial Secretary on 16 September 1848 stating that death squads were still carrying out murders. He wrote of theses fresh murders "It would seem that seven persons were concerned in these murders and the audacity of these people may be imagined from the circumstances of these attacks having taken place almost immediately on my leaving the Macintyre where I had been engaged for a fortnight in investigating the former murders at Mr Jonathan Young's and almost at the moment after my seizing one of the person's concerned in that business and issuing warrants for the arrest of the remainder.... These atrocious outrages appear to me to have been instigated partly by wanton brutality and desire of excitement and partly by a feeling of animosity against the Natives and those who employ them arising from the idea that the rate of wages is lowered by their unpaid services...(slavery)...From the statements of the Natives and the evidence now before me I cannot entertain a doubt of the guilt of the persons now in custody though I feel convinced that they will be regarded as martyrs by their fellows and that every effort will be used to protect them by false evidence from the consequences of their crime."

Despite a warrant being issued for Marks he was never arrested nor were any of the murderers successfully prosecuted. Frederick Walker wrote the Native Mounted Police was established because of Marks "an individual whose atrocities on the Macintyre first induced His Excellence to command me to raise the Native Police."

On 17 August 1848, Frederick 'Filibuster' Walker was duly appointed the first Commandant of the Native Police on the recommendation of William Charles Wentworth and Augustus Morris of the New South Wales Legislative Council. Walker had been the manager of Morris' property, where he had proven himself by violently putting down Aboriginal people, and both had worked for Wentworth on the Murrumbidgee. It was on Morris' property, Callandoon, that Walker would initially establish the Mounted Police headquarters.

Copeland says that "his 'Callandoon Experiment' was a success for the squatters and a disaster for the local Bigambul people." By the time his 'experiment' was over only 100 Bigambul were left alive.

Walker's and the NMP's first engagement with Aboriginal people was on the Macintyre River. William Butler Tooth- who later was accused of slavery, "running an enforced black labour camp which compromised a number of inoffensive Manumbar natives" on his Widgee Widgee run- testified before the 1858 Select Committee "The blacks were so completely put down on that occasion and terrified at the power of the Police." Walker followed this up on the Severn River where he ambushed Aboriginal people and pursued them into thick scrub. A witness stated that "the number that they killed no one but their Commandant and themselves ever know." In June on the Condamine two further 'clashes' occurred. An unknown number of Aboriginal people were killed in the first engagement. Walker wrote that "they suffered so severely that they returned to their own country, a distance of eighty miles."

Near Carbucky on 1 July 1849, Walker and his troopers, together with squatters, surrounded and attacked local Aboriginal people. Walker wrote to the Colonial Secretary "I much regretted not having one hour more fdaylight and I would have annihilated the lot,…" In this one engagement 100 Bigambul were killed.

Even at these early stages Walker's and the NMP's aggressive tactics provoked the Colonial Secretary to caution Walker "not to commit acts of aggressive warfare against the Aborigines and pointing out that the command of the Native Police Force had been entrusted to him for the maintenance of peace and not for the purpose of carrying war into the Aborigine's country.".

Walker, on a number of occasions, sought clarification of the legality of what he had been tasked to do. No such clarification was ever forthcoming. In 1839 Governor Gipps had insisted that all Aboriginal deaths resulting from clashes with Europeans must be subject to an inquiry. In 1850, the Colonial Secretary reiterated that Aboriginal deaths should be investigated, but now, by the officers commanding, the same officers who participated in the attacks. Attorney General Plunket refused to offer an opinion. Essentially, what happened in the field was to stay in the field.

When questioned by the Colonial Secretary about Marshall's shooting of Aboriginal people Walker responded that Marshall had only fired on them seven times in nine months and that these shooting had not been against one tribe in one area but against six different tribes, from 50 to 200 miles apart. These shootings may have been on a relatively small scale compared to other massacres but the numbers still add up to significant deaths and widespread terror. March 1850 on the Lower Condamine, 'killed a number'; July 1850, an Aboriginal man chased and killed; 8 August on the Severn, an Aboriginal man killed; April 1851, Marshall shot two men in the Mary River; Walker's patrol killed another near the Grafton Range; September 1851, two or three were killed; November, one shot; 2 October 1851, two shot, 7 October, two shot. These ones, twos and 'several' soon became dozens then hundreds then thousands.

By 1850/51, three troops of Native Mounted Police were in the Wide Bay area carrying out attacks on Aboriginal people at Widgee and Kilkivan with the participation of local squatters, Corfield, McTaggart and John Murray, who, in 1852, would become the fourth officer of the NMP, a career that would last 19 years and see Murray slaughter Aboriginal people across the state. Murray subsequently described the shooting in a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald. He wrote that on 14 December, he participated in attacks led by Marshall and his troopers upon the Aboriginal owners of Widgee and Kilkivan. At the conclusion of the attacks, one lasting more than an hour, Murray stated that "the blacks suffered severely" and that they had been "taught a lesson which will show them their inferiority in war". The number of Aboriginal people killed is unknown.

Despite the Colonial Secretary's official remonstration against waging warfare, Christmas Eve 1851 saw the NMP field three troops under Walker, Marshall and Sgt Dolan together with squatters, storekeepers and the crew of the cutter ''Margaret and Mary'', all sworn in as 'special constables' in a military style campaign against the Aboriginal Peoples of Fraser Island. The campaign lasted ten days and almost no details were released, Walker claimed that on the final assault he had stayed at camp because he was footsore. Local papers reported "...that the natives were driven into the sea, and kept there as long as daylight or life lasted..." and that subsequently the Aboriginal people of Fraser who had hitherto been friendly to shipwreck survivors had then become hostile.

It seems that the repeated missives from the Colonial Secretary had finally been heard. From this point on indiscretion on the part of his officers would invite the ire and sanction of Walker, but mass murder would not. To this end Walker introduced a rule- the first rule of the NMP- that no white man could accompany the NMP in the field unless they were sworn in as constables, and despite the Crown having enabled unsworn testimony to be accept in courts, it would not be until be until 1876 that the testimony of Aboriginal people would be admitted in law.

It is around this time that Frederick Walker and the NMP became victims of their own success. Walker, unlike many who would follow him, viewed the violence of the NMP as a means to an end, not an end in itself. As the genocidal slaughter on the Macintyre showed, Walker was completely comfortable waging war of aggression against the owners of the soil, but his war had a social and economic agenda.

As the frontier expanded and European pastoralists- and later miners- grabbed more and more land, Aboriginal Peoples were obviously going to resist. Walker, like a paternalistic slave owner, believed that resistance must be crushed swiftly and decisively but that once that was achieved Aboriginal peoples would then become a vitally important economic asset. Once the resistance was broken and Aboriginal People enslaved their free labour could provide a boon to pastoralists. To this end he repeatedly encouraged squatters to allow Aboriginal people onto their runs, something that many had refused to do before the presence of the NMP. He wrote of the success of this policy on the Macintyre, "a run which would not have fetched £100 in May, 1849, was disposed of in January, 1850, for £500, so much had property risen in value by the increased security of life and property."

One of the first beneficiaries of this strategy was Augustus Morris, Walker's friend, colleague and sponsor for the position of Commandant, who owned Callandoon station where the strategy had first been trialled. As a result of the success of the trial on Callandoon, Morris "used only Aboriginals as stockmen and Chinese as hut-keepers."

Unfortunately for Walker the success of his brutality on the Macintyre- and the brutality of Marks, the squatters and Europeans who felt displaced by free Aboriginal labour- had both raised the expectations of the squatters and the ire of the Colonial administration, Christians, and those favourably disposed towards Aboriginal Peoples. Cautions from the Colonial administration about ensuring that the activities of the NMP remained within the vague field of vision of the letter of the law now served as a brake upon wholesale slaughter, while the squatters demanded that the NMP be everywhere at once and then grew angry that Walker would not simply repeat the Macintyre solution in their district. The same squatters in the Wide Bay who had lauded his achievements in 1850 were condemning him and demanding the NMP be replaced by an outright military response in 1852.

While much is made of Walker's insobriety and financial irregularities (which were a product of his location beyond the metropolis and the incompetence of the Colonial administration as much as his own failings), his clashes with a local magistrates, disagreements with squatters, the small size of his force, rugged terrain and vast distances and conflicting expectations all contributed to his sacking. Turning up at the Board of Inquiry into his behaviour drunk as a skunk surrounded by a phalanx of armed NMP troopers probably didn't help, although the Board seemed to read the subtext as the inquiry was adjourned and never resumed.

Europe

Croatia

The Ustaše was a Croatian fascist and ultranationalist organization active, as one organization, between 1929 and 1945, formally known as the Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement ( hr, Ustaša – Hrvatski revolucionarni pokret). Its members murdered hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Roma as well as political dissidents in Yugoslavia during World War II.

France

The French Armed Forces used death squads during the Algerian War (1954–1962).

Germany

= Weimar Republic

=

Death 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 the Soviet-backed Communist Party of Germany, the Majority Social Democratic-dominated government of the Weimar Republic declared a state of emergency and ordered the recruitment of World War I 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 short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic. The most famous victims of the Freikorps were the Communist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who were captured after the suppression of 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 who were associated with them. Among their victims were Matthias Erzberger and Walter Rathenau, both of whom were cabinet ministers in the Weimar regime.

In addition, the city of Munich remained a headquarters of Russian White émigré hit teams, which targeted those who were 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 its own assassination squads. Titled, the Rotfrontkämpferbund they carried out assassinations of carefully selected individuals from the Weimar regime as well as assassinations of members of rival political parties. The most infamous operations of Weimar-era Communist death squads remain 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.

= Nazi Germany

=

Between 1933 and 1945, Germany was a one-party state ruled by the fascist Nazi Party 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 Röhm and all members of the Sturmabteilung who remained loyal to him. Simultaneously, Hitler also ordered a mass purge of the German Reichswehr, 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 Wehrmacht was followed by four travelling death squads called ''Einsatzgruppen'' to hunt down and murder Jews, Communists and other so-called undesirables in the occupied areas. This was the first of the massacres which comprised 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'' murdered some 7,4 million Soviet civilians, 1.3 million 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. These tactics ended only with the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.

= East Germany

=
Between the end of World War II and 1989, Germany was divided into the democratic and capitalist Federal Republic of Germany and the Communist German Democratic Republic, 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 the West, 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.

On the orders of the Party leadership and Stasi chief Erich Mielke, the East German Government financed, armed, and trained, "urban guerrillas," from numerous countries. According to ex-Stasi Colonel Rainer Wiegand, ties to terrorist organizations were overseen by Markus Wolf and Department Three of the Stasi's foreign intelligence wing. Members of the West German ''Rote Armee Fraktion'', the Chilean ''Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front'', and the South African '' Umkhonto we Sizwe'' were brought to East Germany for training in the use of military hardware and, "the leadership role of the Party." Similar treatment was meted out to Palestinian terrorists from the ''Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine'', ''Abu Nidal'', and '' Black September''.

Other Stasi agents worked as military advisers to African Marxist guerrillas and the governments they later formed. They included the Namibian ''SWAPO'' and the Angolan ''MPLA'' during the South African Border War, the ''FRELIMO'' during the Mozambican War of Independence and civil war, and Robert Mugabe's ''ZANLA'' during the Rhodesian Bush War.

Colonel Wiegand revealed that Mielke and Wolf provided bodyguards from the Stasi's counter-terrorism division for Senior PLO terrorist Carlos the Jackal and ''Black September'' leader Abu Daoud during their visits to the GDR. Col. Wiegand had been sickened by the 1972 Munich massacre and was horrified that the GDR would treat the man who ordered it as an honored guest. When he protested, Wiegand was told that Abu Daoud was, "a friend of our country, a high-ranking political functionary," and that there was no proof that he was a terrorist.

During the 1980s, Wiegand secretly recruited a Libyan diplomat into spying on his colleagues. Wiegand's informant told him that the La Belle bombing and other terrorist attacks against western citizens were being planned at the Libyan Embassy in East Berlin. When Wiegand showed him a detailed report, Mielke informed the SED's Politburo, which ordered the Colonel to continue surveillance but not interfere with the plans of the Libyans.

Shortly before German Reunification, West Germany's Federal Constitutional Court indicted former Stasi chief Erich Mielke for collusion with two Red Army Faction terrorist attacks against U.S. military personnel. The first was the car bomb attack at Ramstein Air Base on 31 August 1981. The second was the attempted murder of United States Army General Frederick Kroesen at Heidelberg on 15 September 1981. The latter attack, which was carried out by RAF members Brigitte Mohnhaupt and Christian Klar, involved firing an RPG-7 anti-tank rocket into the General's armored Mercedes. Due to reasons of senile dementia, Mielke was never placed on trial for either attack.

= Federal Republic of Germany

=
Following 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 machine-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.

Hungary

For most of World War II, Hungary was an ally of Nazi Germany. However, the Regency Council of Admiral Miklós Horthy refused to permit the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Nazi death camps.

Then, in October 1944, Horthy announced a cease-fire with the Allied powers and ordered the Royal Hungarian Army to lay down their arms. In response, Nazi Germany launched Operation Panzerfaust, a covert operation which forced Horthy to abdicate in favour of the Fascist and militantly racist Arrow Cross Party, which was led by Ferenc Szálasi. This was followed by an Arrow Cross coup in Budapest on the same day. Szálasi was declared "Leader of the Nation" and prime minister of a "Government of National Unity".

Arrow Cross rule, despite lasting only three months, was brutal. Death squads killed as many as 38,000 Hungarians. Arrow Cross officers helped Adolf Eichmann