Licence to Kill: When governments choose to assassinate

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17353379



Can state-sponsored assassination work as a strategy? And can it ever be justified? Governments don't admit to it, but Iranian nuclear scientists know it happens - and it's not easy to distinguish assassination from the US policy of "targeted killing".

Seventy years ago, a team of British-trained assassins were preparing to strike. Their target was Reinhard Heydrich, one of the most feared men in the Third Reich, then ruling Czechoslovakia.

Britain's recently formed Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the Czechoslovak exile movement based in London both needed to make a mark.

The planning for Operation Anthropoid, as it was known, is detailed in formerly secret memos in the National Archives.