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Jaime Ramón Mercader del Río (7 February 1913 – 18 October 1978) was a Spanish communist who became infamous as the assassin of the Russian Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky in 1940, in Mexico. Declassified archives have shown that he was a Soviet agent.<br/><br/> He served 20 years in Mexican prison for the murder. Joseph Stalin presented him with an Order of Lenin in absentia. Mercader was awarded the title of 'Hero of the Soviet Union' after his release in 1961.<br/><br/> In 1961, Mercader moved to the Soviet Union and was subsequently presented with the country's highest decoration, 'Hero of the Soviet Union', by the head of the KGB Alexander Shelepin. Later, he divided his time between Cuba and the Soviet Union for the rest of his life.<br/><br/> Ramón Mercader died in Havana in 1978. He is buried under the name 'Ramon Ivanovich Lopez' (Рамон Иванович Лопес) in Moscow's Kuntsevo Cemetery.