Assassinations

A gunman killed Azerbaijan's air force chief, Lt. Gen. Rail Rzayev, outside his home in the capital, Baku, the Defense Ministry said. President Ilham Aliyev in televised comments said he would take personal control of the investigation. Officials said they did not know the motive.

After three days of national mourning, life in this grief- and violence-stricken land limped back toward normal Monday as residents crept gingerly out of their homes to buy supplies, greet their neighbors and reanimate cityscapes that had turned into virtual ghost towns following the assassination last week of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

A Beverly Hills historical document dealer paid a record sum Sunday for a letter written by Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Joe Maddalena, owner of the company Profiles In History, bid $68,000 at a Boston auction house for the letter, which is dated Feb. 9, 1865 -- about two months before Booth fatally shot Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.

Back in 1960, the CIA hatched a plan to kill Patrice Lumumba by infecting his toothbrush with a deadly disease. The Congolese leader would brush his teeth and, presto, in a few days or weeks he would be gone. Around the same time, the CIA's Health Alteration Committee -- who thought that name up? -- sent a monogrammed, poisoned handkerchief to Gen. Abdul Karim Kassem, the leader of Iraq. And the CIA's "executive action" unit plotted for years to murder Fidel Castro.

Shouts of "Revenge! Revenge!" rose into the steamy air as tens of thousands of Palestinians, many waving the green flag of Hamas, marched Friday in a tumultuous funeral procession for the radical Islamic group's most senior leader to be killed by Israel during nearly three years of violence.

Dutch leaders agreed Tuesday to go ahead with parliamentary elections next week, as thousands grieved for assassinated anti-immigration candidate Pim Fortuyn. Police were questioning a 32-year-old white Dutchman caught with a pistol minutes after Fortuyn was gunned down Monday in the parking lot of a radio station after giving an interview.

Slobodan Milosevic's feared paramilitary commander was found guilty Wednesday in the 2003 murder of pro-Western Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, an assassination that shocked the nation and damaged the cause of democratic reform. Milorad Ulemek, former head of the notorious Red Berets, his deputy and 10 other men were convicted of planning and carrying out the murder of Serbia's first democratically elected prime minister since World War II.

President Bashar Assad on Saturday ordered the creation of a judicial committee to investigate the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, as Syria continued its scramble to ease growing international pressure. The United Nations investigation into the Feb. 14 bombing death of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has linked top Syrian and Lebanese security officials to the killing and said that Damascus had been uncooperative in the inquiry.

The streets were almost deserted in the gray light before sunrise as the blind sheik, guided by a young boy, walked slowly home from his small mosque after leading the morning prayer on the first day of the holy month of Ramadan. At the corner, the sheik, Ahmed Khudayer, was hit by a volley of bullets and fell to the ground, slain along with his brother Waleed and the boy, Tayseer. Khudayer was Sunni.

Israel's assassination of Hamas chieftain Abdulaziz Rantisi could tilt the group's balance of power toward more radical elements outside the Palestinian territories, with potentially serious regional repercussions, according to Israeli intelligence officials and analysts who study militant Palestinian factions.