Last year on this date, a Central African Republic presidential guard summarily executed a man in a hospital to satisfy a lynch mob pursuing him for murdering his wife.
Amoudou Samassa was supposed to have stabbed his estranged wife to death, provoking an armed mob intent on dispensing street justice. After gendarmes pried him away unkilled, the incensed crowd jammed the streets of the capital Bangui.
Reuters reported that when negotiations to disperse them proved fruitless,
one guard officer, Lt. Jean-Claude Ngaikoisset, finally told the crowd: “If the death of this criminal is the only thing you’re asking for to clear these avenues, then I see no objection”.
File it under “Creative solutions to gridlock.”
On this day..
- 1939: Manuel Molina, Valencia socialist
- Corpses Strewn: The Aiken Party Massacre
- 1857: Two members of the Aiken Party
- 1679: Five Covenanter prisoners from the Battle of Bothwell Bridge
- 1944: Victor Gough, of Operation Jedburgh
- 1836: Six Creek rebels, amid removal
- 1730: Patrona Halil, Ottoman rebel
- 1881: Four Black Friday hangings
- 1977: Benigno Aquino condemned
- 1988: Adrian Lim and his two wives
- 1838: Tsali, Cherokee
- 1780: David Dawson and Ralph Morden, Quaker "traitors"
- Feast Day of St. Catherine of the Wheel