Bomb#20
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None of that follows. Based on those definitions, what follows is that the executions carried out by that organization are not deemed by that organization to be murders. This in no way implies that the executions are not murders. People can deem anything to be anything they please; it doesn't make it true. So you aren't going to answer the question that way unless you define "lawful" -- the definition of murder isn't "a premeditated killing of one human by another that the killer's boss deems unlawful". When Stalin's regime rolls the tanks in and declares itself the new lawful government of Estonia, and executes thousands of Estonians and deems it lawful, and a few meager remnants of the old Estonian government set up a government-in-exile in Oslo, and they deem Stalin's killings unlawful, who's right?The question was: Is an execution always murder?
If the accepted definition of murder is ''the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another (including executions ordered and carried out by criminal organizations, gangs, etc)'' and a government/state deems it lawful to plan the execution of prisoners and carries out these execution at a planned time (premeditated)....being deemed 'legal,' executions carried out by that government are deemed legal and cannot be defined as being murder.
So the issue becomes a question of ethics. The government of Russia, Stalin's regime, an extreme case as an example, may have considered it legal to carry out executions, so by the given definition, these were not 'murders.'
Curiously enough, citing legal technicalities, a few meager remnants of the old government-in-exile refused to recognize the new post-Soviet-collapse Estonian government, and have kept the government-in-exile in operation, claiming to still be the lawful government of Estonia. In 1991 the new internationally recognized Estonian government shot a man convicted of capital murder, after the Soviets pulled out but before it abolished capital punishment. It presumably deems the execution lawful, although any follow-ups would of course be unlawful. The government-in-exile-back-in-Estonia presumably deems that 1991 execution unlawful. Who's right?