Assassination

The premeditated killing of a prominent public figure, typically a political leader, head of state or other person of public significance, generally carried out for a political, ideological, religious or financial motive rather than an ordinary personal dispute, a distinction that separates the term in common usage and much criminological literature from an ordinary murder. Documented historical examples include the 1865 assassination of United States President Abraham Lincoln, the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in Sarajevo, widely credited as the immediate trigger of the First World War, and the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A number of countries maintain a specific legal category or an enhanced sentencing provision for the killing of a head of state or a government official, and the term is also applied, more contested in usage, to a targeted killing carried out by a state's own intelligence or military apparatus against a foreign or domestic target outside a conventional battlefield.