Free Republic

Ramón Mercader from Barcelona killed Trotsky with an ice axe in Mexico City. On 20th August 1940, the exiled Leon Trotsky was fatally wounded at his home in a suburb of Mexico City when an ice axe was driven into his skull. He cried out to his guards as they burst into his study, ‘Don’t kill him! He must talk.’ Despite struggling fiercely, and even managing to bite the hand of his assassin, Trotsky died the next day, and the man who wielded the murder weapon was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He insisted throughout his trial and his...

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian prosecutors on Friday presented a criminal dossier on feared Soviet secret police chief Lavrenty Beria, including a list of hundreds of women he had allegedly stalked and raped. The Russian Military Prosecutor's office presented Beria's 47-volume criminal case, which ended with death sentence and a quick execution in 1953. The dossier will be opened to the public only after 25 years, Russian television stations reported. They said that prosecutors had presented the Beria files to disprove media reports that they had been stolen. Prosecutors allowed the cameramen to film some documents, which included a list of...