Thirty-seven male prisoners who had been convicted or indicted on a charge of threatening the President or national political figure were compared to state inmates, federal inmates, and normative samples on psychometric and demographic variables. Results indicated that assassin/threateners were significantly more paranoid, schizophrenic, and socially alienated than comparison samples. Their heterosexual adjustment and work record tended to be poorer than comparison inmates. Data suggested that the probability of organic impairment was greater for assassin/threateners than for the normative sample. In addition, political threateners were found to be self-destructive, apolitical, Caucasian, and products of disturbed family backgrounds.

En suivant la trajectoire de quatre leaders africains au temps des indépendances, Barthélémy Boganda (République centrafricaine), Patrice Lumumba (République du Congo), Félix Moumié et Ruben Um Nyobè (Cameroun), ce travail cherche à explorer par le biais de l’anthropologie historique, de la méthode comparative et à l’échelle de l’Afrique centrale, en quoi l’assassinat politique peut constituer un moyen de réguler les relations internationales et peut être un fondement de la construction nationale de leur pays d’origine. Au fil de l’itinéraire politique de ces leaders, seront évoquées leurs désillusions onusiennes et panafricaines qui resserrent sur eux l’étau mortel d’une Realpolitik entre bipolarisation et néocolonialisme. L’autre hypothèse explorée est la suivante : il serait possible par le biais de l’Histoire comparée de faire émerger des invariants à l’assassinat politique sous forme de processus récurrents comme l’arme judiciaire, l’arme médiatique, l’absence de sépultures décentes, la damnatio memoriae dont ils sont frappés qui aboutit a contrario à une inversion symbolique et iconique. L’étude s’appuie sur de nombreuses sources qui se sont complétées afin de reconstituer l’enchaînement des évènements et de nouvelles interprétations : archives privées inédites, archives publiques dont certaines ont été déclassifiées pour cette étude, sources audiovisuelles et imprimées, témoignages oraux inédits recueillis par l’auteure. / Through a close examination of the trajectory of four African leaders, Barthélémy Boganda (Republic of Central Africa), Patrice Lumumba (Republic of Congo), Félix Moumié et Ruben Um Nyobé (Cameroun), during the independence era, and by means of the historical anthropology, the comparative method and focusing on Central Africa, this study tries to explore to what extent political assassination could constitute a way of regulating international relationships and lay the foundations of the national construction of their country of origins. Along their political career path, their UN-related and Pan–Africanism disillusionment that tightens around them the lethal noose of a Realpolitik caught between bipolarization and neo-colonialism will be referred to. The other hypothesis developed here is as followed : it could be possible through comparative history to bring out invariance within political assassination under the forms of recurrent processes such as the judiciary weapon, the media weapon, the lack of a decent burial place and the damnatio memoriae they’ve been sentenced to which all contrastingly led to a symbolic and iconic reversal. The study relies on numerous sources that complete each other in order to reconstitute the chain of events and allow new interpretations: private exclusive archives, public archives, some of which having been declassified for this purpose, audio-visual and printed sources, exclusive oral narratives collected by the author.