Beheading

Decapitation (from Latin, caput, capitis, meaning head), or beheading, is the removal of a living organism's head. Beheading typically refers to the act of intentional decapitation, e.g., as a means of murder or execution; it may be accomplished, for example, with an axe, sword, or knife, or by means of a guillotine. Accidental decapitation can be the result of an explosion, automobile or industrial accident, improperly-administered execution by hanging or other violent injury. Suicide by decapitation is rare, but not unknown. In 2003 a British man killed himself by means of a home-made guillotine, constructed over a period of several weeks [1]. Decapitation is always fatal, as brain death occurs within seconds to minutes without the support of the organism's body. There is no way to provide life support for a severed head with current medical techniques.

The word decapitation can also refer, on occasion, to the removal of the head from a body that is already dead. This might be done to take the head as a trophy, for public display, to make the deceased more difficult to identify, or for other reasons.

In an analogous fashion, decapitation can also refer to the removal of the head of an organization. If, for example, the leader of a country were killed, that might be referred to as 'decapitation'.

Decapitation throughout history

Beheading—facsimile of a miniature on wood in the Cosmographie Universelle of Munster: in folio, Basle, 1552.

Decapitation has been used as a form of capital punishment for millennia. The terms capital offense, capital crime, and capital punishment derive from the punishment for serious offenses being the removal of the criminal's head. Political prisoners (labelled traitors) and serious criminals often had their heads removed and placed on public display for a period of time. For instance, in medieval England, the heads were placed on spikes along the walls of the Tower of London. Execution by beheading with a sword (or axe, a military weapon as well) was sometimes considered the "honorable" way to die for an aristocrat, who, presumably being a warrior, could often expect to die by the sword in any event; in England it was considered a privilege of noblemen to be beheaded. This would be distinguished from a "dishonorable" death on the gallows or through burning at the stake. High Treason by nobles was punished by beheading; male commoners, including knights, were hanged, drawn, and quartered; female commoners were burned at the stake.

If the headsman's axe or sword was sharp and his aim was true, decapitation was a quick and thought to be a relatively painless form of death. If the instrument was blunt or the executioner clumsy, however, multiple strokes might be required to sever the head. The person to be executed was therefore advised to give a gold coin to the headsman so that he did his job with care. Not getting their proper money's worth, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex and Mary I of Scotland required three strikes at their respective executions.

Aristocratic heads on pikes - a cartoon from the French Revolution

• Decapitation by guillotine was a common, mechanically-assisted form of execution, invented shortly before the French Revolution (although an earlier version of the guillotine, the Halifax gibbet, was used in England until the 17th century). The aim was to create a painless and quick form of execution that didn't require great skill to carry out. The executioner, after chopping off the head, would hold it up to the crowd. It was believed (with dubious evidence) that the head could still see for around ten seconds. The French had a strict code of etiquette surrounding the executions; A man named Legros, one of the assistants at the execution of Charlotte Corday, was imprisoned and dismissed for slapping the face of the victim after the blade had fallen in order to see whether any flicker of life remained (witnesses say that it flushed as though angry, although with no blood circulation possible, this "evidence" is obviously false). While the idea of showing the dying head the reaction of the crowd or their own dead body is perhaps not beyond the cruelty of the revolutionaries, it would certainly go against the "humane" spirit in which the guillotine was introduced and applied. The guillotine was used in France during the French Revolution and remained the normal judicial method in peace time, in use until the abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981. (The guillotine was also used in Algeria before the French lost control of it, as shown in the Gillo Pontecorvo's film The Battle of Algiers. Another guillotine existed in the Vatican City until recent years. It had been brought in by Napoleon's forces during the early 19th century; and in 1870, the Pope still claimed the authority to use it. The Vatican has abolished capital punishment in its own jurisdiction, and recent Popes have condemned capital punishment where it is still practiced.

• Many German states had used a guillotine-like device known as a Fallbeil since the 17th and 18th centuries, and decapitation by guillotine was the usual means of execution in Germany until the abolition of the death penalty in Germany in 1949. In Nazi Germany, the guillotine was reserved to criminal convicts. It is estimated some 40,000 persons were guillotined in Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. This number includes resistance fighters both in Nazi Germany itself and in those countries that were occupied by them. As these resistance fighters were not part of any regular army they were considered common criminals and were in many cases taken to Germany and decapitated. Decapitation was considered a "dishonorable" death, unlike an "honorable" death, e.g., by execution by firing squad.

A fresco by Ambrogio Lorenzetti

• In Scandinavia, decapitation was the usual means of carrying out the capital punishment. Noblemen were beheaded with a sword, and commoners with an axe. The last executions by decapitation in Finland in 1825 and Norway in 1876 were carried out with axes. The same was the case in Denmark in 1892. The last decapitation in Sweden in 1910 was carried out with a guillotine.

• It is of note that in the biblical Book of Revelation, beheading is named as a method of execution of Christian martyrs during a great persecution (Rev. 20:4). There is no historical record of precisely such an event, so certain commentators believe that this verse refers to a last great persecution of the church that some Christians believe will occur shortly before the Second Coming of Christ. The early Christians considered the Second Coming imminent, for which reason many refused to marry or procreate, and some gave away all their possessions..

• In traditional China decapitation was considered a more severe form of punishment than strangulation although strangulation caused more-prolonged suffering. This was because the Chinese believed that their bodies were gifts from their parents, and that it was therefore disrespectful to their ancestors to return their bodies to the grave dismembered. The Chinese had other punishments, such as the lingering death, that involved cutting the body in multiple pieces.

• In Japan, decapitation was a common punishment, sometimes for minor offenses. Samurai were often allowed to decapitate their inferiors (which was nearly everyone else) at will. James Clavell makes this point early in his novel Shogun. In addition, decapitation was historically performed as the second step in seppuku (ritual suicide by disembowelment). After the victim had sliced his own abdomen open, another warrior would strike his head off from behind with a katana to hasten death and to reduce the suffering. The blow was expected to be precise enough to leave intact a small strip of skin at the front of the neck - to spare invited and honored guests the indelicacy of witnessing a decapitated head rolling about, or towards them, whilst spraying blood. Such an event would have been considered inelegant and in bad taste. The sword was expected to be used upon the slightest sign that the practitioner might yield to pain and cry out - avoiding dishonor to him, and to all partaking in the privilege of observing an honorable demise. As skill was involved, only the most trusted warrior was honored enough to take part. In the late Sengoku period, decapitation was performed as soon as the man to carry out seppuku had made the slightest wound to his abdomen. Decapitation (without seppuku) was also considered the severest and most degrading form of punishment. One of the most brutal decapitations was that of a daimyo, Ishida Mitsunari, who had warred against Ieyasu Tokugawa. After he lost the Battle of Sekigahara, he was buried in the ground and his head was sawn off with a blunt bamboo saw: spectators were invited to help with the sawing, also described at the end of the novel Shogun. These unusual punishments were abolished in the early Meiji era.

• The Muslim rulers of India, especially the Mughals, treated their religious rivals with exceptional severity.The Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur was openly beheaded at Chandni Chowk in Delhi by Aurangzeb after he refused to convert to Islam. To add injury to the insult he forbade any ritual cremation of the Guru. An infuriated Jaita the Rangretta, a sweeper-caste devotee of the Guru, snatched the head away from the executioners and brought it to Anandpur Sahib for the traditional ceremony. The headless torso was also stolen by another devotee of the Guru and cremated in Delhi itself. It is not certain whether the separate ritual cremation of head and body in different locations meet the requirements of the religion for which the Guru died.

Decapitation in the modern world

During WWII, two Japanese soldiers participated in the Contest To Behead 100 People.

Decapitation by sword has in modern times occurred in jurisdictions subject to Islamic Sharia; another form has been practiced by militant Islamists during the US-led occupation of Iraq. As of 2005, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Qatar all had laws allowing decapitation, but only Saudi Arabia was known to practice the sentence: a curved, single-edged sword is used, in public. Militant Islamic groups have, in recent years, begun carrying out so-called beheadings with small knives, some as small as pocket knives. Curiously, these "beheadings" begin with cutting the throat, then slowly hacking away at the spine. Historically, most methods of beheading use a heavy, sharp steel blade, cutting through the neck from behind, which quickly severs the spine, then cuts the blood vessels, trachea, and esophagus: a single stroke usually suffices. The gangs' frontal approach more closely resembles Dhabiĥa, a method used to slaughter animals, thereby rendering the meat hallal, in which the goal is to drain all the blood from the animal as quickly as possible. Ritual slaughter of this kind does not require decapitation; only the draining of all the blood. Among those who practice this nonritual slaughter were Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who recently claimed to have beheaded American journalist Daniel Pearl but did not specify how he beheaded him.

During the war in Bosnia (1992-1995) there were number of ritual beheadings of Serbs who were taken as prisoners of war by mujahedin members of Bosnian Army. At least one case is documented and proven in court by ICTY where mujahedin, member of 3rd Corps of Army BiH, beheaded Bosnian Serb Dragan Popović. [2] [3]

Less orthodox instances of decapitation have also occurred in recent times in some areas of Colombia. Marxist FARC guerrilla as well as right-wing paramilitary groups such as the AUC have sometimes used this method to intimidate local populations and political opponents, and it has not been uncommon for criminal gangs of druglords to also make limited use of decapitation on occasion. Recently, in 2006, a drug war carried out by Mexico's new president, Felipe Calderón, against druglords and various other criminals caused many beheadings by those druglords in retaliation. The heads were then reportedly tossed into a nightclub and placed in front of various other government buildings accompanied with notes of warning from the druglords. The primary means of decapitation in these cases has been the use of a machete or chainsaw.

The militant Islamic separatist group Abu Sayyaf is known to practice beheading in the southern islands of the Philippines. Beheadings are also reportedly practiced by the El Salvadoran street gang Mara Salvatrucha, which operates in the United States and Latin America.[4]

In largely Muslim Indonesia, three Christian schoolgirls were beheaded and one other was critically wounded by Islamist extremists in October, 2005.

In Southern Thailand, there were at least 15 cases where Buddhists have been beheaded. Thai officials suspect the attackers were Islamist extremists who are seeking to separate the Muslim-dominated south from the rest of Thailand. [5], [6], [7]

Chechen rebels were known to behead captured Russian Army soldiers during the First Chechen War and the Second Chechen War (see Chechclear). Four Western telecommunication workers (three Britons and a New Zealander) who were taken hostages for ransom in Chechnya in 1998 were eventually beheaded and their heads found by the side of the road [8].

In April 2005, Saudi Arabian authorities beheaded six Somali nationals for auto theft, causing tension between the two countries. Without a government however, Somalia couldn't intervene on behalf of its citizens. Somalis all over the world have protested the Saudi action.

Image:JackHensley.PNG|thumb|Jack Hensley, seated in orange, before being beheaded by the five men standing over him

File:Beheadings.jpg

A man beheaded in Iraq.

Beheadings have emerged as another insurgent tactic especially in Iraq since April of 2004. Foreign civilians have borne the brunt of the kidnappings, although U.S. and Iraqi military personnel have also been targeted. After kidnapping the victim, the insurgents typically make some sort of demand of the government of the hostage's nation and give a time limit for the demand to be carried out, often 72 hours. Beheading is often threatened if the government fails to heed the wishes of the hostage takers. Frequently the beheadings are videotaped and made available on the Internet.

In Iraq in 2007, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti was accidentally beheaded during his execution by long drop hanging.

On January 12 2007 in Armidale, New South Wales, a World War II veteran named Mark Edwin Hutchinson was beheaded in the backyard of his home by an unknown assailant.[9]

Saudi Arabian authorities beheaded four men in February 2007. Sangeeth Kumara, Victor Corea, Ranjith Silva and Sanath Pushpakumara. These four Sri Lanken workers were convicted in a Saudi Arabian court for an armed robbery committed in October 2004. Their deaths sparked reactions from the international human rights watchdog Amnesty International, which called on the Saudi authorities to abolish the death sentence. The court also ruled that the bodies of the four workers be crucified for public view as an example for others.[10]

A video obtained by the Associated Press on April 20, 2007 shows a young boy, looking to be around 12 years of age, viciously beheading a man identified as Ghulam Nabi, a Pakistani militant accused of betraying the Taliban. According to the AP report, "A continuous 2 1/2-minute shot then shows the victim lying on his side on a patch of rubble-strewn ground. A man holds Nabi by his beard while the boy, wearing a camouflage military jacket and oversized white sneakers, cuts into the throat. Other men and boys call out "Allahu akbar!" — "God is great!" — as blood spurts from the wound. The film, overlain with jihadi songs, then shows the boy hacking and slashing at the man's neck until the head is severed." [11]

Famous people who have been beheaded

Biblical Accounts

Salome and the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, by Titian

• Goliath (according to scripture this example illustrates the aforementioned removal of the head from a body that is already dead variety)
• John the Baptist in the Gospels
• Holofernes in the deuterocanonical Book of Judith (historical accuracy disputed)
• Apostle James, traditionally
• Apostle Paul, traditionally

Christian Saints

The Beheading of Cosmas and Damian, by Fra Angelico

• Saint Acisclus
• Saint Agnes
• Saint Alban (around 304)
• Saint Ansanus
• Saint Anthimus of Rome
• Saint Columba of Spain.
• Saint Columba of France.
• Saint Columba (the Virgin) of Cornwall, England.
• Saints Cosmas and Damian
• Saint Denis, who carried his head to his final resting place, a familiar hagiographical trope.
• Saint Diomedes
• Saint Eurosia
• Saint Felicitas of Rome
• Saints Felix and Nabor
• Saint Firmus and Saint Rusticus
• Saint Gereon
• Saint Gordianus
• Saint Marcellus
• Saint Maximilian
• Saint Nicasius of Rheims, at Rheims
• Saint Oliver Plunkett in Ireland
• Saint Pancras
• Saint Polyeuctus
• Saint Quiteria
• Saints Rufina and Secunda
• Saints Simplicius and Faustinus
• Saint Typasius
• Saint Urith of Chittlehampton, Devon, England.
• Saint Venantius, at Camerino
• Saint Winefride of Flintshire in Wales.

Islamic

• 680 Imam Husayn bin Ali and his 72 companions at the Battle of Karbala- which marked the division between Shia and Sunni

Nazi Germany

• February, 1943 University students Hans Scholl, his sister Sophie Scholl, and Christoph Probst of the White Rose protest movement, for distributing anti-war and anti-Nazi leaflets. Four other members of the White Rose were also executed by the Nazi People's Court later that same year.

China

• Wen Tianxiang
• Guan Yu

England

• Sir William Wallace, (1305)
• William Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings (1483)
• Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1483)
• Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick (1499)
• Edmund Dudley (1510)
• Richard Empson (1510)
• Edmund de la Pole, 3rd Duke of Suffolk (1513)
• Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham (1521)
• Saint John Fisher (1535)
• Saint Thomas More (1535)
• George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford (1536)
• Anne Boleyn (1536)
• Henry Courtenay, 1st Marquess of Exeter (1539)
• Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex (1540)
• Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (1541)
• Catherine Howard (1542)
• Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford (1542)
• Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1547)
• Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley (1549)
• Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset (1552)
• John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland (1553)
• Lord Guilford Dudley (1554)
• Lady Jane Grey (1554)
• Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk (1554)
• Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk (1572)
• Mary, Queen of Scots (1587)
• Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex (1601)
• Sir Walter Raleigh (1618)
• Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford (1641)
• William Laud (1645)
• Charles I of England and Scotland (1649)
• James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton (1649)
• Oliver Cromwell (1661) Although already dead, he was beheaded by order of Charles II, some believe his mother ordered him to
• James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth (1685)
• Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat (1747)

The Colonial Americas

• Panama: Vasco Núñez de Balboa, Spanish conquistador who discovered the Pacific Ocean (1519)
• Brazil: Joaquim José da Silva Xavier (Tiradentes). The body was quartered after his hanging (1792)

French Revolution

• Marie Antoinette
• Louis XVI of France
• Georges Danton
• Madame du Barry
• Antoine Lavoisier
• Madame Élisabeth
• Maximilien Robespierre
• Charlotte Corday

Iraq

• Shosei Koda
• Kim Sun-il
• Kenneth Bigley
• Nick Berg
• Eugene Armstrong
• Jack Hensley
• Maher Kemal
• Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

Netherlands

• Johan van Oldenbarnevelt
• Marinus van der Lubbe

Switzerland

• Wildhans von Breitenlandenberg and 61 companions following the siege of Greifensee during the Old Zürich War (1444).

Saudi Arabia

• Paul Marshall Johnson, Jr.

See also

• Cephalophore
• Dismemberment
• Headhunting
• Head transplant
• Mike the Headless Chicken

External links

• Crime Library
• Beheaded Art

da:Halshugning de:Enthauptung es:Decapitación fa:سر بریدن fr:Décapitation gd:Dìcheannachadh gl:Decapitación ko:참수 it:Decapitazione he:עריפת ראש nl:Onthoofding ja:斬首刑 no:Halshogging nn:Halshogging pl:Ścięcie (kara) pt:Decapitação ru:Обезглавливание simple:Decapitation fi:Mestaus sv:Halshuggning zh:斬首

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