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  1. #1
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    France

    France's final guillotine: 40 years since the end of the death penalty

    On September 10, 1977, 40 years ago this week, France conducted its last execution. Four years later capital punishment was abolished, thus ending the reign of the guillotine.

    The man who was executed was Tunisian immigrant, Hamida Djandoubi. He was found guilty of torturing and killing a woman in Marseilles, France.

    It’s said that he lit her on fire, then strangled her and left her body in the countryside.

    Djandoubi was believed to have been a depressed man who had lost part of his leg in an accident.

    The case generated a great deal of attention throughout France. But despite Djandoubi’s confession, the jury determined that there were no extenuating circumstances and he would go to the guillotine.

    Over the centuries, there were many versions of execution, but the most infamous was the French guillotine.

    The first person to have his head chopped off was highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier in 1792.

    The execution was considered to be a success and the guillotine was continued to be used on political prisoners, the highest profile being King Louis XVI on January 21, 1793.

    During the “Reign of Terror” from 1793 to 1794 the guillotine was taking heads sometimes at a rate of 300 a day.

    The last public execution by guillotine was in 1939.

    Djandoubi was the last execution, earning himself a place in history.

    http://www.euronews.com/2017/09/11/f...-death-penalty

  2. #2
    Senior Member Member ted75601's Avatar
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    Personally, I see no problem with the guillotine. It's quick and painless. The only complaint I can see is that it's messy but that can be easily fixed with a source of water, a hose and a drain. Anyone with a queasy stomach does not have to watch.

    Anyone have any counter arguments that I can't see?

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    I don't disagree. I recently read a book called Severed, which is basically an exploration of severed heads across history, from shrunken heads to the theft of bodies of the poor and of indigenous people by anthropologists for collections in the 19th century up to those people who freeze their heads in the hopes of being thawed 100 years from now and given a new body. And of course they had a chapter on the guillotine, including many pages on the question of whether the brain still perceives after the head is cut off. The author comes down mainly on the side that it doesn't, but does present some pretty compelling anecdotes that it might. Anyway, that might be an argument against, if the brain is still alive and aware for a little while. And we all know that this would be litigated for a long time if it were to be put in place somewhere like the US.

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    Senior Member Member ted75601's Avatar
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    Good point, however, nothing says they have to be awake when the blade comes down. A good shot of anesthetic just before would remove that argument.

  5. #5
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    we had also the bay of cayenne where you could be send and lock up for the rest of your life with labour a small piece of breads stolen or only a fruit
    Last edited by CharlesMartel; 02-06-2018 at 01:08 AM.

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    France warns Iraq against issuing death sentences to European nationals

    France reacts to the Iraqi court's decision of issuing a death sentence to a German woman, who allegedly belongs to the Islamic State. Paris has responded to the decision, saying that, "it will intervene" if its nationals are given capital punishment in Iraq or Syria, for belonging to militant groups.

    "Of course if there was a question of the death penalty, the French state will intervene," Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet told French Media outlets on Sunday.

    When the minister was asked to elaborate on her comments she said, France would "negotiate with the state in question... on a case-by-case basis".

    The comments followed up after the Iraqi court ruled a German woman guilty of belonging to the Islamic State militant group.

    In the past French citizens have been recorded as being the vast majority of overseas fighters who have enlisted with the militant group.

    Local French intelligence services have reported that 690 French nationals were fighting alongside militants in Iraq and Syria in November.

    Muslims should not allow West to 'dictate' true meaning of Islam: VP al Azhar University

    Earlier this month in Pakistan, Vice President (VP) of al Azhar University in Egypt, Mahmood Ahmed Hashim said that Muslims cannot allow the west to dictate the meaning of Islam to them, he said while talking to Express News.

    Talking to reporters at an invitational event in Karachi Press Club, Hashim emphasized the historical significance of the Egyptian institute in his speech.

    "Al Azhar University has been faithfully serving and guiding the Muslim community worldwide for the past thousand years," he told the media personnel present on the occasion.

    The vice president also spoke about the need to reform the image of Islam on the international stage, especially so because terrorists were bent on trying to shift the narrative away from the message of peace.

    "Some elements associate the menace of terrorism with Islam only to defame the latter. We cannot accept or allow westerners to interpret Islam for us," he stressed.

    (source: The Express Tribune)
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Frenchman seeks pardon for father, guillotined in 1957

    France's highest constitutional body began examining a complaint Tuesday from a Frenchman seeking a law change to allow a pardon for his father who was executed in 1957 for killing a policeman in an armed robbery.

    The law in France, which abolished capital punishment in 1981, prohibits the "legal rehabilitation" of convicts who were put to death.

    Gerard Fesch approached the Constitutional Council for a change in law to allow for a posthumous reprieve for his father Jacques Fesch, who became a devout Christian in jail.

    Making the request all the more extraordinary is that Gerard Fesch never knew his father, having been given up by his mother shortly after he was born and growing up in foster care.

    Jacques Fesch was sentenced to death on April 6, 1957 and executed on October 1 of that year, aged 27.

    During a half year on death row, he turned to religion in a dramatic repentance that senior French Catholics today deem worthy of beatification.

    Patrice Spinosi, one of Gerard Fesch's lawyers, said it was "manifestly against the constitution" that a person executed could not be considered for rehabilitation when any other condemned criminal had a right to ask.

    He said he expected a "strong" and "humane" decision from the court.

    The Council is to give its ruling on February 28.

    - 'Engraved in my heart' -

    The guillotine, a vertical, framed device that carries out executions by beheading, was the official means of capital punishment in France from the French Revolution until the country's last execution in September 1977.

    "What I want is that history does not just remember the guillotine but that every person can repent and become better," Gerard Fesch, 65, told AFP about his campaign.

    Gerard Fesch was 40 when he discovered who his father was, after a friend pointed out striking details in a magazine feature about Jacques Fesch's execution.

    "I could have very well stopped there. But I saw that he was interested in my existence," he said, insisting that his father was "not a hooligan".

    Just before being executed, Jacques Fesch wrote a letter to his "son Gerard" saying: "May he know that even though he could not be my son my law, he is in the flesh and his name is engraved into my heart."

    His paternity was legally recognised in 2007, and the next year Gerard took Fesch as his surname.

    The aim is not to "rejudge him" but to find a kind of a pardon and place "another stone in the fight against the death penalty," said Gerard Fesch.

    http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/w...#ixzz6D0LGHVLU
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  8. #8
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    October 10, 2021

    Macron’s call for global abolition of death penalty may end up in another embarrasment as it’s doomed to failure

    By Paul Nuttall
    RT

    President Emmanuel Macron has said that France will use its EU presidency, which begins in January, to push for the international abolition of capital punishment. The idea will be cheered by liberals but won’t lead anywhere.

    France was the last western European country to abolish capital punishment. West Germany abolished it in 1949, the UK in 1965, yet it took France until 1981. Amazingly, the last person to be guillotined in France was as recently as 1977.

    Nevertheless, Macron wants to celebrate the fact that it has been 40 years since France abolished the death penalty by telling everyone else that they should follow suit. No country in the European Union still has the death penalty, so Macron’s target is the wider world.

    However, in my opinion, Macron is not going to get anywhere with this stunt. Indeed, it is not just tinpot dictatorships around the world that maintain a policy of capital punishment, some of the most influential countries on the planet do also.

    For example, China and India, who are projected to be largest economies in the world by the middle of this century, have the death penalty. So does Japan, which is a fully functioning democracy.

    Moreover, 27 states in the United States still have the death penalty. Now, considering that the days of colonial empires have long since passed, I suspect that Americans are not going to take kindly to being lectured by their former colonial rulers.

    Indeed, Macron called the death penalty an “abomination” on Saturday. He lamented the fact that last year “483 state killings [were] carried out by 33 regimes that mostly share a taste for despotism, a rejection of the universality of human rights.”

    Now, considering that 17 people were executed in the US last year, is Macron claiming that America has “a taste for despotism?” I’m not sure using language like this is the way to win friends and influence people in Washington DC.

    So why is Macron doing this? I suspect it is because he is facing a difficult presidential election in 2022, and he wants to be seen as relevant on the international stage. Besides, he also clearly has ambitions of replacing Angela Merkel as the focal point of the European Union. Indeed, like Napoleon and more recent leaders in France’s past, he wants the world to see him as the one true leader of Europe.

    However, if he pursues this idea, he is doomed to fail. He could, potentially, be embarrassed again on the international stage when many states tell him to keep his nose out of their business. And this will not be a good look for Monsieur Macron, especially considering he was made to look a fool recently when the AUKUS deal degraded France.

    And what will the sanctions be when the countries who still have the death penalty tell Macron where to get off? Will the French stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia? I think we all know the answer, especially considering it is a multi-billion-dollar industry. There will be no sanctions because money talks.

    Macron is clearly scrambling around for a cause, but I would suggest that he has picked the wrong one. Last year, for example, it was revealed that 55% of people in France favoured a return of the death penalty.

    Macron’s rivals for the presidency also support the re-introduction of capital punishment. Although she has been quiet on the subject recently, Marine Le Pen backed offering the French people a referendum on the issue in 2015. She also made it clear that she would vote in favour of its return.

    Eric Zemmour, the insurgent right-winger, also supports the reintroduction of capital punishment, saying “I do not think that we have done well to abolish the death penalty. Philosophically, I am in favour of it.”

    Now, I know Macron will be cheered to the hilt by well-meaning liberals for the venture, but I am sorry, it is, as we say in the UK, “all talk and no trousers.” Moreover, in advocating the international abolition of capital punishment, Macron is contradicting the majority of the French people who want to see its return. I therefore suspect that this scheme will be quietly dropped in the months to come.

    https://www.rt.com/op-ed/537108-macr...lty-abolition/

    Election in France looks like a three-way between the right and groom boy at this point.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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