25 Most Brutal Torture Techniques Ever Devised

SUMMARY

Hello people ! I am Fatin Zulaika Binti Rosman from DEC 5B. I’ve created this blog in order to complete my final assignment for Digital and Communication subjects. I’ve come to conclusion in choosing Death Penalty: Historical Brutal Torture as my blog topic. Why I choose this topic? To think of it, my concrete reasons is letting people to get to know the hidden story during ancient time in which how the government has their own ways of punishment towards the criminals. Sometimes I don’t think readers are aware of the full horror of this form of punishment. Mind you, most of the punishment consists of brutal and gruesome methods that are definitely hard to believe. 

  This blog is mainly focusing on:

1) Few methods of capital punishment that happened in different countries with different way of punishments.

2) You can acknowledge the history that lies beneath of each method

3) By having this blog it is one of my ways in persuading young generation to have general knowledge about the punishments although it’s already not being practiced.

4) The viewer does will get the lesson learned for not to commit crimes in any way 

It’s true, some people nowadays are being ignorant in terms of historical story and they don’t even have the idea of what methods that has been used by the government during ancient time.

INTRODUCTION

Brutal execution is different from one country to another. Each method has its own ways of execution and based on the government itself. From England to Europe and others, each of these countries has their own law about the punishments and they behold the torture towards the crimes that has been made in their country. During ancient time, the government is powerful enough to sentence the criminals and decide what execution is suitable for the crimes that they have made. All the family and spouse have no right to defend the victims or even against the law. Even though, some of the execution is medieval but it’s the norms of the society during that time. 

Furthermore from this blog, I’ve put some pictures of the victims and the tools that are used in order to show the viewer’s about the reality and the results of the execution towards the criminals. Each entry will be divided with each topic which includes the list of several methods of execution including Ling Chi, Colombian Necktie, Scaphism and many more. 

 

 I’ve never encountered any of the things that I am about to share with you today. Hope that you will enjoy reading each of my entry and all the pictures that is included in the blog. Take a lesson from what ancient people does towards their criminal plus the viewer’s should be thankful because we don’t have to go through this kind of execution. It seems as good a time as any to talk about real life horror and the death penalty.  

BEWARE OF NIGHTMARE !!

Without further: the list…

LING CHI

 

The executioner will sliced from breast to thighs

Ling Chi or known as execution by slow cutting was practiced in China until it was outlawed in 1905. Also known as death by a thousand cuts, the executioner’s task was to make as many cuts as possible without killing the victim. In the execution, the criminal is slowly cut in the arms, legs, and chest, until finally they are beheaded or stabbed in the heart. Many western accounts of the execution method are largely exaggerated, with some claiming that the execution could take days to perform. This is horrendously cruel towards the victims since they have to go through slow death. What makes slow slicing particularly horrific is that it continued into the 20th century and the era of photography. 

In 1895, Sir Henry Norman witnessed a Lingchi execution. In The People and Politics of the Far East, Norman wrote that the executioner sliced off pieces by “grasping handfuls from the fleshy parts of the body, such as the thighs and the breasts”. He went on to state that “then the limbs are cut off piecemeal at the wrists and the ankles, the elbows and knees, the shoulders and hip. Finally the victim is stabbed in the heart and his head cut off”. 

This form of execution was reserved for the most serious of crimes such as treason, killing one’s parents, mass murder or murdering one’s master.One reason for cutting the body into pieces even after death was it contravened certain Confucian principles and meant the victim would not be “whole” in the spiritual afterlife – so this was a punishment for both this life and the next. Ling Chi was one of the ultimate forms of the “Five Punishments”, a penal scale of increasing severity. These dated back to ancient China and included a range of punishments such as flogging, amputation of nose or feet, banishment, tattooing, fines or castration.

COLOMBIAN NECKTIE

The tongue is drawn outside the open wound

Colombian necktie is a gory execution method, in which a knife is used to slit the victim’s throat, and the tongue is drawn out through the cut, mainly to frighten or intimidate the people who see the corpse. In this method, the victim’s throat is slit with a knife or a sharp object, and the tongue is drawn outside from the open wound. The tongue is pulled towards the sternum rendering the name necktie. The victim dies of blood loss or of asphyxiation. The killing method is very disturbing and is meant to warn others, such as informers of illegal activities. 

This method of execution came into existence around 1950, during the ten-year period of La Violencia in Colombia. This period of chaos in the Colombian countryside began after the murder of a leader called Jorge Eliecer Gaitan. There is a common assumption that it was invented by the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar of the 1970s, but it came into existence much earlier during the La Violencia, along with several other atrocious techniques of killing. It is estimated that about 200,000 to 300,000 people lost their lives, and several others were injured and misplaced.

 

It was in 1985, that the term Colombian necktie was used in The Washington Post, an American publication, in a review about Code of Silence, the Chuck Norris movie. Another reference was made in 1986 in Running Scared. It is believed that Colombian necktie was used to execute informers in the illegal drug industry. However, there is still no evidence that Colombian criminals exported this method to the US during the 1970s cocaine upsurge, and whether gangsters carried it out on live persons or on corpses.

LETHAL INJECTION

 

The saline is inserted into usable veins

Lethal injection is the practice of killing a person using a lethal dose of drugs administered intravenously. Two methods of lethal injection exist today, one using a three-drug protocol and another using one large dose of a barbiturate. In 1977, Oklahoma became the first state to adopt lethal injection as a means of execution, though it would be five more years until Charles Brooks would become the first person executed by lethal injection in Texas on December 2, 1982. Today, all of the 32 states that have the death penalty use this method. 

When this method is used, the condemned person is usually bound to a gurney and a member of the execution team positions several heart monitors on this skin. Two needles (one is a back-up) are then inserted into usable veins, usually in the inmate’s arms. Long tubes connect the needle through a hole in a cement block wall to several intravenous drips. The first is a harmless saline solution that is started immediately. Then, at the warden's signal, a curtain is raised exposing the inmate to the witnesses in an adjoining room. Then, the inmate is injected with sodium thiopental - an anesthetic, which puts the inmate to sleep. Next flows pavulon or pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes the entire muscle system and stops the inmate's breathing. Finally, the flow of potassium chloride stops the heart.

Lawmakers stress that lethal injection is both cheap and “appears more humane and visually palatable relative to other methods.”. “Despite the numerous documented accounts of botched lethal injections over the decades,” death penalty scholar Deborah Denno claims, state legislatures have continually “turned to medicine to rescue the death penalty.” In short, lethal injection has come to represent the ultimate form of humane and sterile execution in America’s institution of capital punishment.

Also in 1977, Oklahoma became the first state to adopt lethal injection as a means of 
execution, though it would be five more years until Charles Brooks became the first 

person executed by lethal injection in Texas on December 7, 1982. 

Death results from anesthetic overdose and respiratory and cardiac arrest while the condemned person is unconscious.

CRUCIFIXION

The body is left hanged

In antiquity crucifixion was considered one of the most brutal and shameful modes of death. Probably originating with the Assyrians and Babylonians, it was used systematically by the Persians in the 6th century BC. Alexander the Great brought it from there to the eastern Mediterranean countries in the 4th century BC, and the Phoenicians introduced it to Rome in the 3rd century BC. It was virtually never used in pre-Hellenic Greece. The Romans perfected crucifixion for 500 years until it was abolished by Constantine I in the 4th century AD. Crucifixion in Roman times was applied mostly to slaves, disgraced soldiers, Christians and foreigners--only very rarely to Roman citizens. 

Some research stated that "Most physicians believe that a crucified individual’s normal respiration was hindered so severely as to cause asphyxiation. In addition to asphyxia, the victim would be suffering from shock due to preliminary flogging and/or the nails that were hammered into the hands and feet." 

Death, usually after 6 hours to 4 days, was due to multifactorial pathology: after-effects of compulsory scourging and maiming, dehydration causing shock and pain, but the most important factor was progressive asphyxia caused by impairment of respiratory movement. Death was probably commonly precipitated by cardiac arrest, caused by vasovagal reflexes, initiated inter alia by severe pain, body blows and breaking of the large bones.  Some stated that "In crucifixion, death never comes quickly, but the pain and torture do; and they continue. It is for these reasons that crucifixion was a far worse death sentence than ad bestias, the sack, vivicombustion, or any other method of execution (Aubert and Sirks, 113)." 

Lastly, the attending Roman guards could only leave the site after the victim had died, and were known to precipitate death by means of deliberate fracturing of the tibia and/or fibula, spear stab wounds into the heart, sharp blows to the front of the chest, or a smoking fire built at the foot of the cross to asphyxiate the victim.

HANGED, DRAWN AND QUARTED

 

The victim's will suffer horrendous pain

Hanging, drawning and quartering, at its most simple, could be seen as a means to an end: a way of producing the most bloody and visible death possible. And yet, under that first simplistic layer, there are other interpretations which throw a little more light onto the importance of the various acts. It must be remembered that the people of the 14th century were immersed, through the dominance of the church, in a culture of symbolism and ritual: for example, the practice of heraldic display included much symbolism that was tied up with rank and status. 

Once there, the prisoners were hanged in the normal way in example without a drop to ensure that the neck was not broke but cut down whilst still conscious. The penis and testicles were cut off and the stomach was slit open. The intestines and heart were removed and burned before them. The other organs were torn out and finally the head was cut off and the body divided into four quarters. The head and quarters were parboiled to prevent them rotting too quickly and then displayed upon the city gates as a grim warning to all. 

Various Englishman received such a sentence, including over 100 Catholic martyrs for the "spiritual treason" of refusing to recognize the authority of the Anglican Church. Some of the more famous cases are listed below.

1)      Prince David of Wales

2)      Sir William Wallace

3)      English Tudors

4)      William Collingbourne

KNEE SPLITTER

 

The spikes will cut the victim's legs

The knee splitter, a terrible torture, was mostly used during the Inquisition. What this instrument accomplished was to permanently render the knees useless. Even though the name implies that this instrument was only used for "splitting" knees, it was also used in other body parts including: the elbows, arms and even the lower legs. As the torturer turned the handle, the claws slowly slammed against each other mutilating any skin in between. The number of spikes the knee splitter contained varied from three to more than twenty. 

The Knee Splitter was comprised of two wooden blocks lined with very large, very menacing looking spikes. The blocks were connected by two large screws. I think you can guess what would happen next. The victim’s leg was inserted between the two spiked blocks and the screws were then turned, causing the blocks to close toward each other. It would effectively maim a person and forever cripple them–if they were lucky enough to not die of infection or blood loss.

Another technique was blunting the spikes and making them wider so that they penetrated the flesh slower, thus maximizing pain. There were many variants to this instrument. Some claws were heated beforehand to maximize pain - others had dozens of small claws that penetrated the flesh slowly and painfully. Even though this method very seldom provoked direct death, it was often followed by other more painful methods if the victim refused to cooperate.