Execution: A Guide to the Ultimate Penalty (40 page)

MANNAIA

Very little is known about this particular method of execution, except that it was an Italian predecessor to the Halifax gibbet and guillotine. The study of ancient engravings and pictures shows it to have been a structure consisting basically of two uprights, about 3 inches square, joined by cross-bars at top and bottom. A further cross-bar connected the two uprights, this being positioned about 15 inches above the lower one, on which the victim rested his neck.

The blade travelled down the grooves cut into the inner surfaces of the uprights, and was probably held in place by a rope passing through the upper cross-bar, the blade dropping when the rope was either released or severed.

The height of the device, 4 to 5 feet, would require the condemned person to kneel, without apparently being held firmly in position as in the guillotine, such a ‘voluntary’ acquiescence thereby jeopardising the success of the operation.

It was reportedly in use in 1702, when a Count Bozelli was beheaded by the mannaia. Some years later, in 1778, John Howard, the dedicated prison reformer, visited Florence and, during his inspection of the torture chamber in the city gaol, was shown ‘a machine for decollation [beheading], which prevents the repetition of the stroke which often happens when the axe is used’.

MAZZATELLO

Widely employed in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Italy, this was probably one of the most brutal methods of execution ever devised, requiring minimal skill on the part of the executioner and superhuman acquiescence by the victim.

The standard procession brought the victim and his confessor on to the scaffold, where waited the black-clad and masked executioner leaning on a long-handled mallet, the mazzatello. After prayers had been said for the salvation of the condemned man’s soul, the executioner would move round to stand behind the felon and, after a couple of preliminary swings of the weapon, would bring it down with crushing force on the victim’s head. That done, he would kneel over the crumpled, figure on the scaffold boards and, producing his knife, would then proceed to slit the unconscious man’s throat.

MILL WHEEL

In almost the same way as the early Christian martyrs were executed by the Romans, i.e. being tied round the circumference of a wheel, which was then propelled over a series of spikes, so during World War One Serbs accused of aiding the enemy or of spying were put to death by the Austro-Hungarian troops by being bound to the paddles of a water-mill wheel. The wheel was then set in motion, and each time the half-drowned victim surfaced he became the target for the bayonets of the waiting soldiers.

NAIL THROUGH THE EAR

In 1929, when the tyrant Bacha Sachao, having deposed King Amanullah, ruled the mountainous country of Afghanistan with savage cruelty and torture, he dispatched his rivals in many different ways. One method was to tie them over a cannon’s muzzle and fire the gun, but a more agonising death he reserved for Ali Ahmed Jan, Amir of Jalalabad, for he crucified his enemy to the ground, and then drove a long nail through his ear and into his brain.

NECKLACING

This malignant practice has been widely used by gangs in South Africa during recent years and consists of placing a car tyre around the neck of a bound victim and setting it alight. The intense heat of the burning material, the fumes penetrating his lungs, and the effect of the molten rubber searing his body bring a slow and horrendous death.

Although such deaths are inflicted by criminal elements in South Africa and therefore do not qualify as judicial executions, in the Caribbean island of Haiti the situation was very different when President Aristide ruled the country. He was noted for his cruel repression of the Ton Ton Macoute, the secret police raised by his predecessor Papa Doc, and he certainly favoured sentencing those captured to suffer ‘
père lebrun
’, necklacing them. In a broadcast on Radio Nationale he urged his listeners: ‘If you catch one, give him what he deserves. What a beautiful tool! It’s lovely, it’s cute, it’s pretty, it has a good smell; wherever you go you want to inhale it!’

OVER A CANNON’S MUZZLE

‘Blown from a cannon’ is a phrase which conjures up a picture of the victim being projected in the same way as a shell is fired, but this is erroneous for obvious reasons of bodily size, etc. The actual method of execution entailed the victim’s being secured
across
the muzzle of a cannon or field gun, a shell then being fired, blasting its way through the victim’s body and killing him outright.

This penalty was exacted, by the captain of HMS
Rattlesnake
while sailing on the west coast of Africa in the early 1800s, on a marine who had been caught attempting to bore a hole in the ship’s bottom. The Lords of the Admiralty, though condemning such a barbaric punishment, doubtless thought that the crime merited it, for the captain was granted a Royal Pardon.

About that time, when the towns of Madras and St David were captured by the French, natives suspected of being spies were executed in this manner, and even as recently as 1858 army mutineers in India suffered the same fate.

Reports of such a method doubtless travelled north over the border into Afghanistan, for when, in January 1929, King Amanullah of Afghanistan and his brother Inayatullah abdicated, the man who then seized the throne was Bacha Sachao, and among the many tortures he inflicted on recalcitrant subjects was that of being ‘blown from a cannon’s mouth’, disembowelled by an artillery shell.

PENDULUM

‘Set the device oscillating slowly and rhythmically; observe how the victim, unable to move anything other than his eyes, fixes his gaze on the only moving object in the chamber…’

One of the great differences between human beings and animals is, I assume, that only the former have imagination. So it was only a matter of time before the authorities of some country, somewhere, would use this intangible quality and would manipulate the victim into torturing himself mentally. All that was required was to encourage his mind to turn inwards on itself, allow it to conjecture what could happen, let it conjure up the images lurking in the nightmarish corners of everyone’s imagination – and there would be hardly any need to apply any physical torment. And so, under the auspices of the Spanish Inquisition, the torture of the pendulum, or pendola, was born.

All that was required was a bench on which to secure the victim absolutely immovably. From the ceiling, at right-angles to the bench, suspend a large pendulum. Not an enlarged version of those used in clocks; a crescent-shaped blade would replace the circular bob, measuring about 12 inches from horn to horn, and honed to a razor-like sharpness.

Set the device oscillating slowly and rhythmically; observe how the victim, unable to move anything other than his eyes, fixes his gaze on the only moving object in the chamber; notice how the steady motion lulls him almost into an hypnotic trance, his gaze following the blade as if mesmerised.

Now start to extend the pendulum shaft imperceptibly, and wait. Count the seconds until the victim, with hideously dawning awareness, realises that the device is not merely swinging – but is starting to descend! See his eyes dilate in horror, his body stiffen and arch, his every muscle strain against the ropes in a frenzied attempt to twist out of its path, to avoid the arc which will surely glide sinuously over his palpitating flesh, tracing thin blood-red lines along its path as it swings, scything deeper and deeper, little more than a millimetre at a time, slicing through muscle, tissue and bone, until, eventually, his chest cavity gaping and ruptured, the implacable blade skims across his very heart...

Now is the time to ask the question, before all sanity deserts him. If he refuses to answer correctly, turn away – and leave him to pay the penalty of being an unbeliever.