The last executions in the Netherlands took place on this date in 1952: Dutch SS volunteer Andries Jan Pieters and German SS man Artur Albrecht, both condemned for war crimes committed during the Nazi occupation. Each was implicated in numerous incidents of torturing and executing prisoners.
Both men were shot at Waalsdorpervlakte, outside The Hague. They were the tail end of a 1940s era that brought numerous capital prosecutions for World War II offenses.
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Pieters (left) and Albrecht (right).
Capital punishment had been abolished in the Netherlands for ordinary crimes since 1870. Although execution remained theoretically available for military crimes until 1993, nobody after Pieters and Albrecht came close to facing an executioner. Today, the death penalty is completely forbidden in Dutch law.
On this day..
- 1817: Ann Statham, infanticide
- 1868: Charles Martin and Charles Morgan lynched in Cheyenne, Dakota Territory
- 1706: Mary Channing, at the Maumbury Rings
- Unspecified date: Mariotto Mignarelli, proto-Romeo
- 1791: Alessandro Cagliostro condemned
- 1963: Frederick Charles Wood, "Let me burn"
- 1857: Gaspard Matraccia, parrot-lover
- 1644: Mary Latham and James Britton, adulterous lovers
- 1873: William Foster
- 1979: Gu Shan, of The Vagrants fame
- 1804: Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-Condé, duc d'Enghien
- 1556: Thomas Cranmer, architect of Anglicanism