Capital punishment in Belgium

Europe holds the greatest concentration of abolitionist states (blue). Map current as of 2022

Abolished for all offences

Abolished in practice

Retains capital punishment

Capital punishment in Belgium was formally abolished on August 1, 1996, for all crimes, in both peacetime and wartime.[1] The last execution for crimes committed in peacetime took place in July 1863, when in Ypres a farmer was executed for murder. The last execution for an ordinary crime took place on 26 March 1918 at Veurne Prison when Emile Ferfaille, a military officer found guilty of killing his pregnant girlfriend, was guillotined. This was the first execution to be carried out since 1863. The guillotine that was used had to be imported from France.

Between November 1944 and August 1950, 242 people were executed by firing squad for crimes committed during the Second World War. 241 of them had been convicted as collaborators. A total of 2,940 persons were sentenced to death in that period, but only 242 executions were carried out. The last person ever to be executed in Belgium was the German war criminal Philipp Schmitt on 8 August 1950, the camp commander of the concentration camp Fort Breendonk. Although the Belgian Penal Code stipulated that the death penalty had to be carried out by decapitation, the 242 persons executed after the Second World War were tried by a military court and so they were executed by firing squad.

> The death penalty is abolished.

– Article 14bis of the Belgian Constitution

On 1 January 1999, the Sixth Protocol to the European Convention of Human Rights, forbidding the death penalty in all circumstances, came into force and Belgium has also signed the second optional protocol of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. On 2 February 2005, the prohibition of the death penalty was also included in the Belgian Constitution by inserting an Article 14bis.

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "Abolition of the death penalty". FPS Foreign Affairs - Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation. 26 January 2022. Retrieved 2023-05-11.

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Capital punishment

Current judicial methods|

* Hanging
* Shooting
* firing squad
* Lethal injection
* Nitrogen hypoxia
* Electrocution
* Gas chamber
* Beheading
* Stoning

Ancient and
post-classical
methods|

* Damnatio ad bestias
* Blood eagle
* Blowing from a gun
* Brazen bull
* Boiling
* Breaking wheel
* Burial
* Burning
* Crucifixion
* Crushing
* Decimation
* Disembowelment
* Dismemberment
* Drowning
* Republican marriage
* Elephant
* Falling
* Flaying
* Garrote
* Gibbeting
* Guillotine
* Hanged, drawn and quartered
* Immurement
* Impalement
* Ishikozume
* Mazzatello
* Sawing
* Scaphism
* Seppuku
* Slow slicing
* Stoning
* Suffocation in ash
* Upright jerker
* Waist chop

Related topics|

* Enforcement or use by country
* Most recent executions by country
* Crime
* Death row
* Executioner
* list
* Scharfrichter
* Final statement
* Last meal
* Penology
* List of methods
* Nine familial exterminations
* Religion and capital punishment
* Wrongful execution
* Botched execution
* Resolutions concerning death penalty at the United Nations
* Capital punishment for drug trafficking
* Capital punishment for homosexuality
* Trial by ordeal

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Capital punishment in Europe

Sovereign states|

* Albania
* Andorra
* Armenia
* Austria
* Azerbaijan
* Belarus
* Belgium
* Bosnia and Herzegovina
* Bulgaria
* Croatia
* Cyprus
* Czech Republic
* Denmark
* Estonia
* Finland
* France
* Georgia
* Germany
* Greece
* Hungary
* Iceland
* Ireland
*   * Italy
* Kazakhstan
* Latvia
* Liechtenstein
* Lithuania
* Luxembourg
* Malta
* Moldova
* Monaco
* Montenegro
* Netherlands
* North Macedonia
* Norway
* Poland
* Portugal
* Romania
* Russia
* San Marino
* Serbia
* Slovakia
* Slovenia
* Spain
* Sweden
* Switzerland
* Turkey
* Ukraine
* United Kingdom
* Vatican City

States with limited
recognition|

* Abkhazia
* Kosovo
* Northern Cyprus
* South Ossetia
* Transnistria

Dependencies and
other entities|

* Åland
* Faroe Islands
* Gibraltar
* Guernsey
* Isle of Man
* Jersey
* Svalbard

Other entities|

* European Union

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