Falling from the 10th floor – how to kill a country and an opposition

The political dissident was detained, without charge, upon his arrival back into the country. He’d just returned from the United Nations where his party leader had addressed the General Assembly denouncing the violent repression of opponents of their authoritarian state. (His family, like so many others, had been forced to flee to a nearby country.) Once detained, he was forcibly taken to the dreaded down town headquarters of the intelligence service from which he never reappeared. He was not officially charged – although the official version was that the interrogation was over his part in an alleged plot to assassinate the president. Seventy-two hours later, he supposedly requested to go to the bathroom – and then threw himself from the 10th floor of the building. More…