Ramón_Mercader

Ramón Mercader (Jaime Ramón Mercader del Río, 7 February 1913 – 18 October 1978), was a Spanish Communist and NKVD secret agent who assassinated the revolutionary Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in August 1940. Mercader was imprisoned for 19 years and 8 months in Mexico for murdering the exiled Trotsky with an ice axe.In 1960, after release from Mexican imprisonment, Mercader was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal and the Order of Lenin medal, and lived at different times in Cuba, the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia.