death squad

noun

: any of various extremist groups whose members kill suspected political adversaries and criminals

Examples of death squad in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
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According to police officers and internal United Nations documents, another relative from Spin Boldak ran death squads out of a special battalion at headquarters. Matthieu Aikins Victor J. Blue Peter Ganim Krish Seenivasan Steven Szczesniak, New York Times, 22 May 2024 The murder of Jews at Kamenets-Podolsky, Babi Yar, Odessa and 2,500 sites in Ukraine and the former Soviet Union not only involved German Einsatzgruppen (i.e. Nazi death squads) but many Ukrainian, Belarussian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Romanian and Hungarian collaborators. Dr. Irving Berkowitz, Sun Sentinel, 12 Sep. 2024 But the 79-year-old Duterte later said gangsters — not police officers — made up his death squad, adding to the ambiguity surrounding the squad’s operations. Reuters, NBC News, 29 Oct. 2024 In 2009, a special supreme court tribunal sentenced him to 25 years in prison for authorizing the operation of a death squad responsible for killing civilians. Lauren Said-Moorhouse, CNN, 12 Sep. 2024 See all Example Sentences for death squad 

Word History

First Known Use

1873, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of death squad was in 1873

Dictionary Entries Near death squad

Cite this Entry

“Death squad.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/death%20squad. Accessed 23 Dec. 2024.

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