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calijnaar t1_iua0bbj wrote

I can't think of anything involving conspiracy theories on the level of the JFK assassination, but there were plenty of cases of political assassinations in Europe in the past 150 years.

Firstly, there's various Anarchist movements killing high level political leaders around the turn of the 20th century. (This is not limited to Europe, by the way, US president William McKinley is another prominent victim). Several European monarchs and nobles were killed, including Tsar Alexander II and the Austrian-Hungarian Empress Elizabeth. Several non-royal leading politicians were also assassinated, among them French president Sadi Carnot, three Spanish prime ministers: Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, José Canalejas and Eduardo Dato Iradier, and Russian Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin.

(There were also many unsuccesful attempted assasinations, for example on Leopold II of Belgium, the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II, Wilhelm I of Prussia and Queen Victoria, but also on Benito Mussolini)

The German Weimar Republic saw a lot of politically motivated terror and assasinations, with several prominent politicians being assassinated by right wing paramilitaries. The killings of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht during the Spartakist uprising in 1919 are actually surrounded by some conspiracy theories, as there are claims that the Freikorps members who killed them had approval from government officials (possibly even president Ebert). Kurt Eisner, the premier of the People's State of Bavaria was assasinated by a nationalist who apparently acted alone. In the 1920s the Organisation Consul was behind several high profile assasinations, including those of former finance minister Matthias Erzberger and foreign minister Walther Rathenau.

The later 20th century saw terrorist assassinations by left wing paramilitary organisations like the German Rote Armee Fraktion or the Italian Brigate Rosse. The RAF carried out several attacks against US and NATO facilities, among their prominent victims were Jürgen Ponto, director of Dresdner Bank, and Hanns MArtin Schleyer, head of the German employers' association in the 70s and senior diiplomat Gerold Braunmühl in the 80s. In 1991 they assassinated Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, head of the Treuhandanstalt reponsible for the privatisation of the state-owned property of the former GDR. This is another case where there are some conspiracy theories, because although the RAF claimed responsibility, there have been claims (by Rohwedder's widow, amongst others) that remnants of the East German Stasi were involved (allegedly because Rowhwedder and the Treuhand were close to finding money sectreted away by the SED).

The most prominent victim of the Italian Red Brigades was former Prime Minister Alberto Moro with a later group in the 90s and early 2000s killing Masimo D'Antona and Marco Biagi, advisors to prime ministers Massimo D'Alema and Silvio Berlusconi.

There were also assasinations (and other attacks) by various separatist/independence groups like the Irish IRA, the Basque ETA and the Corsican FLNC. The most prominent victim of the IRA is probably Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, a close relatuve of the royal family. The ETA assassinated Luis Carrero Blanco, prime minister under dictator Francisco Franco, and more or less his designated successor. The FLNC assassinated Claude Érignac, the prefect of Corsica.

There were also assassinations by criminal groups, like the Mafia killing of Italian judge Giovanni Falcone.

The closest you can come to a JFK style mystery is probably the assasination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme in in 1986 which is essentially still unsolved (there were theories about an involvement of the Kurdish PKK, later Christer Pettersen was convicted of the assassination, then acquitted in a second trial)

Another death surrounded by conspiracy theories is that of Uwe Barschel, minister president of German state Schleswig-Holstein, who was involved in allegations about a very dirty reelection campaign with illegitimate attacks on political opponents. His death in 1987 was ruled a suicide, but there have been various conspiracy theories claiming that he was actually murdered (usually to cover up wrong doings during the campaign etc)

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McGillis_is_a_Char t1_iuate23 wrote

Fun fact for the thread about Abdul Hamid, is that he got so paranoid about assassination that he was almost constantly armed.

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