Three months ago I wrote about the idea of a Center for Conspiracy Studies. Such an institute would interest itself in assassinations and develop a danger rating system…one to five, colours of the rainbow, that sort of thing. I had in mind an Assassination Risk Index and league tables. I was not planning to go as far as John Marlan Poindexter…80 next month…and set up a Futures Market in ARIs. But as with the Theoretical Physicist’s Thought Experiments, the methodology…how and who to aggregate, criteria to adopt, measurement and analysis of data…would be interesting.

After an assassination…Olof Palme, John Lennon, Princess Diana…or a failed assassination attempt…President Reagan, Pope John Paul II…investigations veer off in two directions…the WhoDunnit and the WhyDunnit. The police, charged with finding the killer and the evidence to have him convicted, interest themselves in motive if it helps get their man. Once they have him they turn to gathering the evidence the prosecutors need to get a conviction. Here the Swedish system of calibrating arrest warrants with the Quality of Suspicion is a good one.

In the Anna Lindh case for instance Per-Olof Svensson was apprehended on Tuesday 16th September 2003…five days after the murder…and detained as a suspect on justifiable grounds…the lowest degree of suspicion. Then on Wednesday 24th September 2003…two weeks after the attack that killed the Swedish Foreign Minister…Mijailo Mijailović was apprehended on the higher level of suspicion of probable cause. And Per-Olof Svensson was released.

This seems to be the right way to proceed. My sympathies are with the police. They need to be cautious. They may not be sure they have the right man but they are reluctant to let him go if there is a chance they have got it right. Of course an innocent man should not be deprived of his freedom just as a guilty man should be charged with his crime. But nobody has any problems with these cases. It is the grey areas that are difficult when the police are not sure they have the right man. In practice there may be conflicting views within the police or they may be worried about having insufficient evidence to win a conviction so they hope something will come up if they hold the man in custody.

But this is a problem for police and prosecutors. The ordinary Agatha Christie reading middle classes are more interested in the WhyDunnit than the WhoDunnit…as are Public Authorities responsible for protecting law-abiding citizens. They do not cry over spilt milk. They learn what they can and move on. Their job is to prevent new killings. Prosecutors are also interested in the motive. Magistrates and Jurors need convincing. Arguments of defending counsel need deflecting. Victims too have an interest in a murderer being apprehended and punished…and Islamic Law deals with this better than our own legal systems.

But the Search for Motive has fallen between too many stools as it gets parcelled out between Investigating Journalists, Police Detectives, Crown Prosecutors and in high profile cases…the killing of Dr David Kelly for instance...a shadowy Fourth Estate which the press delight in referring to as the Intelligence Services. Singly none of these groups are up to the job…and each looks over his shoulder and locks his desk at night. Their theoretical framework is inadequate…and will remain so until there is a paradigm shift in the definition of Killing and Killingry.

Mr & Mrs Public may be for or against capital punishment or think 20-years incarceration is too much or too little…and the broadcast media and the tabloid press can always whip up a debate. But while Joe Public might express an opinion if you ask him he is indifferent to the fate of the murderer…as likely to feel pity as fury. Jennie Public feels she understands the WhyDunnit with crimes of passion because she has been there…and stepped back from the brink. She understands how others might not be able to. Senseless killings too can be explained in terms of the lottery of life…the victim was in the wrong place at the wrong time and there are evil people out there.

Even Killing for a Cause is understandable if you get into the mind of the Suicide Bomber. It was the planes and not the fighter pilots and Bomber Crews that were in short supply in the early years of the Hitler War. Men went off to certain death in response to patriotic fervour and social pressure…particularly from women. Moreover dying is glamorous. Beowolf‘s purpose was to die gloriously so future generations would honour his memory in song.

Neither Olof Palme nor Anna Lindh died Glorious Deaths. Nor do I accept for one moment that their deaths were from Indiscriminate Slaughter. They were murdered. Orders were given. Instructions were carried out that should have been ignored. Just as the Vocation and Toil of the Medieval World have disappeared and been replaced by something Ivan Illich calls Shadow Work. So Glorious Death and Indiscriminate Slaughter are being replaced by Shadow Death…Stalin Purges, Nazi Holocausts, Genocide in Darfur, Srebrenica and Rwanda, Starvation by World Trade Terrorism, Killing for Profits, Annihilation by Debt…and the Political Assassination is returning.

Shadow Killing may be Impersonal and Killingry may be Depersonalised but the Human Race must strive to move beyond Contract Killings and the Nuremberg Defence as the way to settle differences…just as our forefathers moved beyond Slavery as an organising principle for society. An Assassination Risk Index is one place to start.