3 ms·

What is it with these tinpot strongmen? Polonium, mortars, nerve gas... in my day when you wanted someone dead you just shot him.

• wbl 10y ago
  Do you know about Georgi Markov? Bulgaria concerned about the propaganda fallout if they killed him and it was known, so they injected him with ricin instead. Mossad attempted to use poison to assassinate the head of Hezbollah. It went comically wrong, with his driver chasing down the assassins with a rolled-up newspaper.
  • Lordarminius 10y ago
    > Mossad attempted to use poison to assassinate the head of Hezbollah. It went comically wrong, with his driver chasing down the assassins with a rolled-up newspaper. Mossad successfully poisoned the head of Hezbollah by spraying a delayed action toxin into his ear. His driver (who did not comprehend what had happened, and whom he was dealing with) chased after the assassins who in turn fled fearing he was a bodyguard. Nazrallah was for certain a dead man and was only saved by the personal intervention of the the Jordanian king who ordered the Israeli ambassador to provide an antidote or deal with the consequences of a hostile Jordanian state. The Sheik was administered the antidote on his hospital bed and survived. There was nothing to laugh about.
    • owenversteeg 10y ago
      I believe you've conflated two assassination attempts, one on Hassan Nasrallah, one on Khaled Mashal. Mashal was the one in 1997 where the antidote was turned over by the Israeli government. Nasrallah was in 2008, and also survived after being treated by Iranian doctors.
      • Lordarminius 10y ago
        > I believe you've conflated two assassination attempts .... You are right. My mistake.
    • saiya-jin 10y ago
      well there is for some of us since its pretty epic failure. and the story goes deeper - why Israel bended over and more was direct threat from Jordanian kind that they would execute those Mossad spies publicly if antidote was not provided immediately... that would be a massive fail for Mossad/Israel since they try always to kill in silence and stay in shadows. and upon release of those spies they stated they will try to kill him again :)
• patmcguire 10y ago
  It's easy to check for guns at customs.
  • flukus 10y ago
    Any spy agency worth a damn should be able to source weapons locally.
    • patmcguire 10y ago
      Yeah, I added and then deleted that the victims were probably under some sort of security observance already: the watches notice a gun earlier.
• anigbrowl 10y ago
  I think such incidents are more messages about the ability to stage an elaborate and unexpected attack than about the death of the unlucky victim, who may not even be that important in the scheme of things but is chosen to call attention to the political nature of the act.