Editing Decapitation (section)

=== Europe ===
==== Bosnia and Herzegovina ====
During the [[war in Bosnia and Herzegovina]] (1992–1995) there were a number of ritual beheadings of Serbs and Croats who were taken as prisoners of war by [[Bosnian mujahideen|mujahideen]] members of the [[Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina|Bosnian Army]]. At least one case is documented and proven in court by the [[International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia|ICTY]] where mujahedin, members of 3rd Corps of Army BiH, beheaded [[Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina|Bosnian Serb]] Dragan Popović.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/2006/p1054-e.htm |title=UN – TRIBUNAL CONVICTS ENVER HADZIHASANOVIC AND AMIR KUBURA Press Release, March 2006 |website=UN.org |publisher=[[United Nations]] |access-date=21 February 2022 |archive-date=8 May 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090508193314/http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/2006/p1054-e.htm |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/had-3ai030926e.htm |title=Third Amended Indictment |access-date=13 October 2006 |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090805095536/http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/had-3ai030926e.htm |archive-date=5 August 2009}}</ref>

==== Britain ====
[[File:The execution of King Charles I from NPG.jpg|thumb|right|A contemporary German print depicting the [[Execution of Charles I|beheading]] of [[Charles I of England|King Charles I]]<ref name=npg>{{cite web |title=The Execution of King Charles I |url=https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw35443/The-execution-of-King-Charles-I |website=[[National Portrait Gallery, London|National Portrait Gallery]] |access-date=2 March 2019 |archive-date=14 April 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190414134140/https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw35443/The-execution-of-King-Charles-I |url-status=live }}</ref>]]

In [[History of the United Kingdom|British history]], beheading was typically used for noblemen, while commoners would be hanged; eventually, hanging was adopted as the standard means of non-military executions. The last actual execution by beheading was of [[Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat]] on 9 April 1747, while a number of convicts were beheaded posthumously up to the early 19th century.<ref name=":0">{{cite book|title=The Last Highlander |last1=Fraser |first1=Sarah |date=2012 |page=9}}</ref> (Typically traitors were sentenced to be [[Hanging, drawing and quartering|hanged, drawn and quartered]], a method which had already been discontinued.) Beheading was degraded to a secondary means of execution, including for treason, with the abolition of drawing and quartering [[Forfeiture Act 1870|in 1870]] and finally abolished by the [[Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1973]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Kenny |first=C. |title=Outlines of Criminal Law |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |date=1936 |edition=15th |page=323}}</ref><ref>The [[Chronological Table of the Statutes]], 1235–2010. [[The Stationery Office]]. 2011. {{ISBN|978-0-11-840509-6}}. Part II. p. 1243, read with pages viii and x of Part I.</ref> One of the most notable executions by decapitation in Britain was that of [[Charles I of England|King Charles I of England]], who was [[Execution of Charles I|beheaded]] outside the [[Banqueting House]] in [[Whitehall]] in 1649, after being captured by [[Roundheads|parliamentarians]] during the [[English Civil War]] and [[High Court of Justice (1649)|tried for treason]].<ref>{{citation |last=Gheeraert-Graffeuille |first=Claire |year=2011 |title=The Tragedy of Regicide in Interregnum and Restoration Histories of the English Civil Wars |journal=Études Épistémè |volume=20 |issue=20 |doi=10.4000/episteme.430|doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{citation |last=Holmes |first=Clive |year=2010 |title=The Trial and Execution of Charles I |journal=[[The Historical Journal]] |volume=53 |issue=2 |pages=289–316 |doi=10.1017/S0018246X10000026 |s2cid=159524099 }}</ref>

In England, a [[bearded axe]] was used for beheading, with the blade's edge extending downwards from the tip of the shaft.{{Citation needed|date=February 2009}}

==== Celts ====
{{see also|Celtic headhunting}}
The [[Celts]] of western Europe long pursued a [[Ancient Celtic religion#Head cult|"cult of the severed head"]], as evidenced by both Classical literary descriptions and archaeological contexts.<ref>{{cite book|author-link=Barry Cunliffe |last=Cunliffe |first=Barry |date=2010 |title=Druids: A Very Short Introduction |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |pages=71–72}}</ref> This cult played a central role in their temples and religious practices and earned them a reputation as [[Headhunting|head hunters]] among the Mediterranean peoples. [[Diodorus Siculus]], in his 1st-century ''[[Bibliotheca historica|Historical Library]]'' (5.29.4) wrote the following about Celtic head-hunting:
{{blockquote|They cut off the heads of enemies slain in battle and attach them to the necks of their horses. The blood-stained spoils they hand over to their attendants and striking up a paean and singing a song of victory; and they nail up these first fruits upon their houses, just as do those who lay low wild animals in certain kinds of hunting. They embalm in [[cedar oil]] the heads of the most distinguished enemies, and preserve them carefully in a chest, and display them with pride to strangers, saying that for this head one of their ancestors, or his father, or the man himself, refused the offer of a large sum of money. They say that some of them boast that they refused the weight of the head in gold.}}
Both the Greeks and Romans found the Celtic decapitation practices shocking and the latter put an end to them when Celtic regions came under their control.

[[File:Testa in pietra con più facce, da corleck hill, co. di cavan, I-II secolo dc. 03.jpg|thumb|upright=1.0|The [[Corleck Head]], Irish, 1st or 2nd century AD]] 
According to [[Paul Jacobsthal]], "Amongst the Celts the [[human head]] was venerated above all else, since the head was to the Celt the soul, centre of the emotions as well as of life itself, a symbol of divinity and of the powers of the other-world."<ref>Paul Jacobsthal ''Early Celtic Art''</ref> Arguments for a Celtic cult of the severed head include the many sculptured representations of severed heads in La Tène carvings, and the surviving Celtic mythology, which is full of stories of the severed heads of heroes and the saints who [[Cephalophore|carry their own severed heads]], right down to ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'', where the [[Green Knight]] picks up his own severed head after Gawain has struck it off in a [[beheading game]], just as [[Saint Denis of Paris|Saint Denis]] carried his head to the top of [[Montmartre]].<ref name="Wilhelm, James J. 1994">Wilhelm, James J. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." The Romance of Arthur. Ed. Wilhelm, James J. New York: Garland Publishing, 1994. 399–465.</ref><ref name=SHMI>{{cite book|author-first=Paolo O. |author-last=Pirlo |title=My First Book of Saints |year=1997 |publisher=Sons of Holy Mary Immaculate – Quality Catholic Publications |isbn=971-91595-4-5 |pages=238–239 |chapter=St. Denis}}</ref>

A further example of this regeneration after beheading lies in the tales of [[Connemara]]'s [[Féchín of Fore|Saint Féchín]], who after being beheaded by [[Vikings]] carried his head to the Holy Well on [[Omey Island]] and on dipping it into the well placed it back upon his neck and was restored to full health.<ref name="Charles-Edwards">Charles-Edwards, ''Early Christian Ireland'', p. 467 n. 82.</ref>

==== Classical antiquity ====
[[File:Schnorr_von_Carolsfeld_Bibel_in_Bildern_1860_187.png|thumbnail|[[Beheading of John the Baptist]] by [[Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld]], 1860]]
{{Quote box
| quote = [[Pothinus]] matched [[Mark Antony]] in crime:<br />They slew the noblest Romans of their time.<br />The helpless victims they decapitated,<br />An act of infamy with shame related.<br />One head was [[Pompey]]'s, who brought [[Roman triumph|triumphs]] home,<br />The other [[Cicero]]'s, the voice of Rome.
   |source= — [[Martial]], ''[[Martial's Epigrams|Epigram]]'' I:60 (Trans. by [[Garry Wills]])
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}}
The ancient Greeks and Romans regarded decapitation as a comparatively honorable form of execution for criminals. The traditional procedure, however, included first being tied to a stake and whipped with rods. Axes were used by the Romans, and later swords, which were considered a more honorable instrument of death. Those who could verify that they were Roman citizens were to be beheaded, rather than undergoing [[crucifixion]]. In the [[Roman Republic]] of the early 1st century BC, it became the tradition for the severed heads of public enemies—such as the political opponents of [[Gaius Marius|Marius]] and [[Sulla]]—to be publicly displayed on the [[Rostra]] in the [[Forum Romanum]] after execution. Perhaps the most famous beheading was that of [[Cicero]] who, on instructions from [[Mark Antony]], had his hands (which had penned the ''[[Philippicae]]'' against Antony) and his head cut off and nailed up for display in this manner.

==== France ====
In France, until the [[Capital punishment in France#Abolition|abolition of capital punishment]] in 1981, the main method of execution had been by beheading by means of the [[guillotine]]. Other than a small number of military cases in which a firing squad was used (including that of [[Jean Bastien-Thiry]]), the guillotine was the only legal method of execution from 1791, when it was introduced by the [[Legislative Assembly (France)|Legislative Assembly]] during the last days of the kingdom [[French Revolution]], until 1981. Before the revolution, beheading had typically been reserved for noblemen and carried out manually. In 1981, President [[François Mitterrand]] abolished capital punishment and issued commutations for those whose sentences had not been carried out.

The first person executed by the guillotine in France was highwayman [[Nicolas Jacques Pelletier]] in April 1792. The last execution was of murderer [[Hamida Djandoubi]], in Marseille, in 1977.<ref>{{citation |title=Il y a 30 ans, avait lieu la dernière exécution |trans-title=Thirty years ago, the last execution took place |url=http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/actualites/societe/20070910.OBS4158/il_y_a_30_ans_avait_lieula_derniere_execution.html |work=[[Le Nouvel Observateur]] |date=10 September 2007 |access-date=28 March 2014 |language=FR |archive-date=27 February 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080227015639/http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/actualites/societe/20070910.OBS4158/il_y_a_30_ans_avait_lieula_derniere_execution.html }} ({{Google translation|en|fr|3=http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/actualites/societe/20070910.OBS4158/il_y_a_30_ans_avait_lieula_derniere_execution.html}})</ref> Throughout its extensive [[overseas France|overseas colonies and dependencies]], the device was also used, including on [[St Pierre and Miquelon|St Pierre]] in 1889 and on [[Martinique]] as late as 1965.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://grandcolombier.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/zuzaregui.jpg |format=JPG |title=Photographic image of newspaper article |website=Grandcolombier.com |access-date=21 February 2022 |archive-date=1 December 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171201035012/http://grandcolombier.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/zuzaregui.jpg |url-status=live }}</ref>

==== Germany ====
* [[Fritz Haarmann]], a serial killer from [[Hannover]] who was sentenced to death for killing 27 young men, was decapitated in April 1925. He was nicknamed "The Butcher from Hannover" and was rumored to have sold his victims' flesh to his neighbor's restaurant.
* In July 1931, notorious serial killer [[Peter Kürten]], known as "The Vampire of Düsseldorf", was executed on the guillotine in [[Cologne]].
* On 1 August 1933, in [[Altona, Hamburg|Altona]], [[Bruno Tesch (antifascist)|Bruno Tesch]] and three others were beheaded. These were the first executions in [[Nazi Germany]]. The executions concerned the [[Altona Bloody Sunday]] (''Altonaer Blutsonntag'') riot, an [[Sturmabteilung|SA]] march on 17 July 1932 that turned violent and led to 18 people being shot dead.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.asfpg.de/english/4763/17330.html |title=asfpg ~ Altonaer Stiftung für philosophische Grundlagenforschung |access-date=25 February 2017 |archive-date=31 May 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170531181653/http://www.asfpg.de/english/4763/17330.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/157552/The-Axe-of-Wandsbek/overview |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081207113544/http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/157552/The-Axe-of-Wandsbek/overview |archive-date=7 December 2008 |department=Movies & TV Dept. |work=[[The New York Times]] |author-first=Eleanor |author-last=Mannikka |date=2008 |title=Movies: About Das Beil von Wandsbek}}</ref>
* [[Marinus van der Lubbe]] by guillotine in 1934 after a [[show trial]] in which he was found guilty of starting the [[Reichstag fire]].
* In February 1935 [[Benita von Falkenhayn]] and [[Renate von Natzmer]] were beheaded with the axe and block in [[Berlin]] for espionage for [[Poland]]. Axe beheading was the only method of execution in Berlin until 1938, when it was decreed that all civil executions would henceforth be carried out by guillotine. However, the practice was continued in rare cases such as that of [[Olga Bancic]] and [[Werner Seelenbinder]] in 1944. Beheading by guillotine survived in West Germany until 1949 and in East Germany until 1966.
* A group of three Catholic clergymen, Johannes Prassek, Eduard Müller and Hermann Lange, and an Evangelical Lutheran pastor, Karl Friedrich Stellbrink, were arrested following the bombing of Lübeck, tried by the People's Court in 1943 and sentenced to death by decapitation; all were beheaded on 10 November 1943, in the Hamburg prison at Holstenglacis. Stellbrink had explained the raid next morning in his Palm Sunday sermon as a "trial by ordeal", which the Nazi authorities interpreted to be an attack on their system of government and as such undermined morale and aided the enemy.
* In October 1944, [[Werner Seelenbinder]] was executed by manual beheading, the last legal use of the method (other than by guillotine) in both Europe and the rest of the Western world. Earlier the same year, [[Olga Bancic]] had been executed by the same means.
* In February 1943, American academic [[Mildred Harnack]] and the university students [[Hans Scholl]], [[Sophie Scholl]], and [[Christoph Probst]] of the [[White Rose]] protest movement, were all beheaded by the [[Nazi Germany|Nazi State]]. Four other members of the [[White Rose]], an anti-Nazi group, were also executed by the [[People's Court (Germany)|People's Court]] later that same year. The anti-Nazi [[Helmuth Hübener]] was also decapitated by People's Court order.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.jta.org/archive/east-germany-reports-execution-of-auschwitz-selection-physician |title=East Germany Reports Execution of Auschwitz 'selection' Physician |website=Jta.org |date=11 July 1966 |access-date=21 February 2022 |archive-date=21 February 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220221145011/https://www.jta.org/archive/east-germany-reports-execution-of-auschwitz-selection-physician |url-status=live }}</ref>
* In 1966, former [[Auschwitz]] doctor [[Horst Fischer]] was executed by the [[German Democratic Republic]] by guillotine, the last executed by this method in Europe outside France. Beheading was subsequently replaced by shooting in the neck.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.spiegel.de/politik/nahschuss-in-den-hinterkopf-a-0a66680e-0002-0001-0000-000013489942?context=issue |title="Nahschuß in den Hinterkopf" |trans-title="Close Shot In The Back Of The Head" |first=Hans |last=Halter |work=[[Der Spiegel]] |date=25 August 1991 |access-date=29 March 2021 |language=de |archive-date=18 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220118175053/https://www.spiegel.de/politik/nahschuss-in-den-hinterkopf-a-0a66680e-0002-0001-0000-000013489942?context=issue |url-status=live }}</ref>

==== Nordic countries ====
In [[Nordic countries]], decapitation was the usual means of carrying out capital punishment. Noblemen were beheaded with a [[sword]], and commoners with an [[axe]]. The last executions by decapitation in [[Finland]] in 1825, [[Norway]] in 1876, [[Faroe Islands]] in 1609, and in [[Iceland]] in 1830 were carried out with axes. The same was the case in [[Denmark]] in 1892. [[Sweden]] continued the practice for a few decades, executing its second to last criminal—mass murderer [[Johan Filip Nordlund]]—by axe in 1900. It was replaced by the guillotine, which was used for the first and only time on [[Johan Alfred Ander]] in 1910.

[[Finland]]'s official beheading axe resides today at the Museum of Crime in [[Vantaa]]. It is a broad-bladed two-handed axe. It was last used when murderer [[Tahvo Putkonen]] was executed in 1825, the last execution in peacetime in Finland.<ref name="otonkoski-1">{{cite journal |last=Otonkoski |first=Pirkko-Leena |title=Henkirikoksista kuolemaan tuomittujen kohtaloita vuosina 1824–1825 Suomessa |trans-title=The fates of those sentenced to death for homicides in 1824–1825 in Finland |url=http://www.genealogia.fi/genos/68/68_55.htm |journal=Genos |language=fi |volume=68 |pages=55–69, 94–95 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101227081225/http://genealogia.fi/genos/68/68_55.htm |archive-date=27 December 2010 |access-date=14 December 2010}}</ref>

==== Spain ====
[[File:Colecta para sepultar el cadáver de don Álvaro de Luna, por Rodríguez de Losada.jpg|thumb|The beheading of the 15th Century Castilian Royal favorite, Don [[Álvaro de Luna]]. Painting by José María Rodríguez de Losada (1826–1896).]]
In Spain executions were carried out by various methods including strangulation by the [[garrotte]]. In the 16th and 17th centuries, noblemen were sometimes executed by means of beheading. Examples include [[Anthony van Stralen, Lord of Merksem]], [[Lamoral, Count of Egmont]] and [[Philip de Montmorency, Count of Horn]]. They were tied to a chair on a scaffold. The executioner used a knife to cut the head from the body. It was considered to be a more honourable death if the executioner started with cutting the throat.<ref>Execution of the Marquess of Ayamonte on the 11th. of December 1645 Described in "Varios relatos diversos de Cartas de Jesuitas" (1634–1648) Coll. Austral Buones Aires 1953 en [[Gerardus Johannes Geers|Dr. J. Geers]] "Van het Barokke leven", Baarn 1957 Bl. 183–188.</ref>