French assassinations of key dealers ended freelance gun-running to the FLN

Evidence

In September 1958 one of them, a Swiss explosives expert called Marcel Léopold, was picked up dead in the corridor of one of Geneva’s smartest hotels. An autopsy revealed that he had been shot in the neck by a tiny blowpipe dart, tipped with curare and fired from a contraption like a bicycle pump, which “The Killer” had thoughtfully left behind for the benefit of the world Press. Six months later, when Puchert was visiting Frankfurt, a limpet bomb was attached under the driver’s seat of his Mercedes and detonated by inertia. Filled with ball-bearings, it did relatively little damage to the car, but riddled the ample arms trafficker like truffles in a Perigord pâté. With the death of Puchert, freelance gun-running more or less faded away. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 813

Categorization

• SEED: The blowpipe curare dart and limpet-ball-bearing assassination details read like spy fiction — a strong case study on French extrajudicial kill operations as industrial policy.
• XREF: connects to: Undelivered Moroccan weapons crippled the F.L.N.’s Oran operations; Algerian migrant wages in France funded F.L.N. weapons against French conscripts

Related

• Undelivered Moroccan weapons crippled the F.L.N.’s Oran operations (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• Algerian migrant wages in France funded F.L.N. weapons against French conscripts #complicates (0.40)