AHC:earliest possible regime preferring low-key liquidation of high-profile dissident

Fenestella

Banned
I'm looking for the regimes as early as possible who had all the means to formally arrest (extradite if the hunted ‎went abroad) and publicly execute high-profile dissidents, but chose to secretly dispatch/disappear them instead, and denied responsibility. It would be more telling if that's the regime's modus operandi rather than a one-off.

I'm interested in this because it's an interesting "who's worse" question: all the regimes who covertly remove dissidents and deny responsibility understand what they do are evil, while most (if not all) of the regimes who overtly remove dissidents are too evil to understand what they do are evil.
 
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gaijin

Banned
Sneakily killing of the opposition to the leader has been part and parcel of human behaviour all the way back to stone age hunter gatherers. So, the answer to your question would most likely be something called ever since the rule of "Ughhh the Dominator, also known as the Fear of the Savanna, hunter of Gazelle, ruler of Lions, inseminator of women and occasionaly gatherer of nuts and berries if there is nothing else around.".

There is nothing "evil" about this. It's simply the way humans have operated, are operating and most likely will keep operating.
 

Fenestella

Banned
Sneakily killing of the opposition to the leader has been part and parcel of human behaviour all the way back to stone age hunter gatherers. So, the answer to your question would most likely be something called ever since the rule of "Ughhh the Dominator, also known as the Fear of the Savanna, hunter of Gazelle, ruler of Lions, inseminator of women and occasionaly gatherer of nuts and berries if there is nothing else around.".
It's understandable you have to invoke prehistory because in recorded history, 99.9% of pre-1900 regimes preferred public execution of high-profile dissidents.
 
For all we know many did and we just don't know of it, since the whole "low-key" thing worked as intended.
 
For all we know many did and we just don't know of it, since the whole "low-key" thing worked as intended.

rageed, there has always been 101 reasons not to assassinate a thorn in the side of a leader publicly but to dispose of him quietly instead, most often because he has backers of his own that might avenge his death. It is smarter to arrange a "hunting accident" or something at much less risk. This has been happening since the Stone Age.
 
It's understandable you have to invoke prehistory because in recorded history, 99.9% of pre-1900 regimes preferred public execution of high-profile dissidents.

No need to be rude.

The biggest issue is thanks to the usually poor quality of historic records it's very hard to say who fell off a horse and who was quietly murdered especially if there was an effort to hide it in the first place. In fifty years the only records, if they exist at all, would be the official ones and there would be nobody alive who remembered the rumors about a possible murder. If someone in Roman times had made a determined effort to liquidate annoying bureaucrats we would have no idea. They just weren't important enough to be recorded. "Such and such was thrown by his horse" covers a lot of sins.

Historical records, especially pre-medieval are sketchy enough that low-key liquidation could have been a common tactic but we just can't prove that one way or another.

PS: Weren't the Medici's known for "disappearing" and poisoning their enemies?
 
I believe the Bible clearly mentiones King Saul sending that young upstart populist David on what were technically thinly veiled suicide missions in the hope that the Philistines would 'offed' David for him. David later famously played the same trick un Uriah the Hittite, but that was because he was lusting to bed Uriah's widow. So the answer to your question about low-key liquidation is literally "It's been going on since biblical times"
 
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And of course, there are all those rumours that Livia had Marcellus, Drusus, Gaius, Lucius, Germanicus poisoned.
 

Fenestella

Banned
I've notice that some friends have applied the term "dissident" to any perceived enemy of a ruler. My fault. I'm not sure if "enemy of the state" is the right term.

I still have the impression that once a pre-modern regime/government reached a conclusion/consensus that X is an "enemy of the state", the regime/government would prefer to publicly execute X.
 
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