Mock execution

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A mock execution is a stratagem in which a victim is deliberately but falsely made to feel that his execution or that of another person is imminent or is taking place. It may be staged for an audience or a subject who is made to believe that he is being led to his own execution. This might involve blindfolding the subjects, making them recount last wishes, making them dig their own grave, holding an unloaded gun to their head and pulling the trigger, shooting near (but not at) the victim, or firing blanks.

The psychological trauma may lead to a breakdown where someone may do or say something to stop the execution; it might act as a threat that future conduct may result in a real execution; or suggest that the apparent victim's death has changed the circumstances.

Historical instances

• In 1849, several Russian dissidents of Petrashevsky circle, including the famous writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky became victims of a now famous case of a mock execution; the pardon of the Czar was not read to them until the moment when the firing squad was already aiming their rifles at them. This traumatizing experience also shows up in Dostoyevsky's literary works.
• In 1939 a Soviet general (later Field Marshal) Konstantin Rokossovsky was tortured including suffering several mock executions ordered by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
• In 1968, Commander Lloyd M. Bucher, Commander of the USS Pueblo, was tortured and put through a mock firing squad by North Korean interrogators in an effort to make him confess; see USS Pueblo. Eventually, the Koreans threatened to execute his men in front of him, and Bucher relented. None of the Koreans knew English well enough to write the confession, so they had Bucher write it himself. They verified the meaning of his words, but failed to catch the pun when he said "We paean the North Korean state. We paean their great leader Kim Il Sung"^[1][2] ("We paean" sounds almost identical to "we pee on"). Following an apology, a written admission by the U.S. that Pueblo had been spying, and an assurance that the U.S. would not spy in the future, the North Korean government decided to release the 82 remaining crew members.
• The Iranian hostages of 1979 were subject to a mock execution by their detainers.
• Reports of mock executions carried out by the US Marines on detainees in Iraq surfaced in December 2004,^[3] as the American Civil Liberties Union published internal documents of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The documents were written seven weeks after the publication of the photographs which triggered the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.
• In April 2003, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Allen West (currently a Congressman serving Florida's 22nd congressional district) had an Iraqi police officer named Yehiya Kadoori Hamoodi seized and brought in for questioning based on allegations he was planning an imminent attack on Mr. West's unit. After Mr. Hamoodi was allegedly beaten by an interpreter and several U.S. troops, Mr. West took Mr. Hamoodi out of the interrogation room and showed him six U.S. troops with weapons in hand. Mr. West told Mr. Hamoodi, "If you don't talk, they will kill you." Mr. West then placed Mr. Hamoodi's head in a bucket used for cleaning weapons, placed his gun into the bucket and discharged the weapon near Mr. Hamoodi's head. Mr. Hamoodi then provided Mr. West with names, location and methods of the alleged ambush. However, the alleged ambush—supposedly scheduled for the following day—never occurred, and a search of Mr. Hamoodi's residence uncovered no evidence of any plans of attack. Mr. Hamoodi was subsequently released without charges. For his involvement in this incident, Mr. West was charged with violations of two statutes of the Uniform Code of Military Justice; however, charges were subsequently dropped after Mr. West was fined $5,000 for the incident and allowed to resign his position with the U.S. Army without court martial.^[4]

Examples in media

Mock executions are common in fiction as easy suspense can be created by having the protagonist subjected to what turns out to be only a mock execution, such as in the Spike Lee film Inside Man, or V for Vendetta.

Film and television

• In the popular crime drama, Criminal Minds, season two episode "Revelations" includes a scene where Spencer Reid is tied to a chair and being tortured (as part of the two-part episode story line). This includes a serial killer Tobias Hankel loading a gun with a blank and firing it at Reid, who is convinced that he's about to die. Later on in the same episode, Reid is forced to dig his own grave, though he manages to steal Hankel's gun and shoot him before anything can happen.
• In the TV series, 24, Jack Bauer gets terrorist Syed Ali to reveal the location of a nuclear bomb in terrorist hands by carrying out a mock execution of Ali's son and then threatening to "execute" the rest of his family.
• In the manga/anime Death Note, written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata, Light Yagami and Misa Amane undergo a mock execution carried out by Light's father. It was done in order to negate suspicions that the pair acted collectively as the serial killer known as Kira.
• In The Gods Must Be Crazy a man is blindfolded and led into a helicopter. Minutes later he is pushed out the open door, unaware he is only a few feet above the ground.
• An episode of the dark comedy series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia centers around the main characters being taken hostage and forced to compete in order to "survive". Near the end of the episode, they are taken to the roof of their bar and held at gunpoint. Their captors then drop their shotguns, revealed to be rubber replicas, and leave the roof, which is a single story high, via a fire escape.
• In the 1983 film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, Major Jack Celliers, played by David Bowie, is subjected to a mock firing squad by his Japanese captors in an attempt to break him.
• In the Simpsons episode "The Frying Game", Homer is led to what he believes to be his death, but it turns out to be a reality television show.
• Two episodes of HBO's popular crime-drama series, The Sopranos, feature mock executions:
  • In episode "Denial, Anger, Acceptance", Meadow Soprano and her choir sing the English version of the lullaby Ar Hyd y Nos, intercut with the mock execution of Christopher Moltisanti, and the real execution of Brendan Filone.
  • In the episode "Where's Johnny?", Phil Leotardo mock executes lady shylock, Lorraine Calluzzo, by having her tightly bound, gagged with duct tape, and shot at, using a telephone directory to stop the bullet. He warns, "Next time, there'll be no next time."
• In the film To End All Wars, upon being taken prisoner, British troops are blindfolded and lined up. The Japanese fire at them but they are using blanks, so no one is killed.
• In the 2000 film Traffic, Javier Rodriguez Rodriguez (Benicio del Toro) is put through a mock execution in order to gain the trust of General Arturo Salazar (Tomás Milián).
• In the 1987 film The Untouchables, during a raid on the Canadian border, one of Al Capone’s bookkeepers agrees to provide Eliot Ness with information after Jim Malone (Sean Connery) pretends to kill the bookkeeper’s friend by putting a gun in his mouth and blowing the back of his head off. The bookkeeper did not know that his friend was already dead. He witnessed the shooting through a window, and Malone made the point of saying, “I won't ask you again. What's the matter. Can't you talk with a gun in your mouth? One... two... three...” to explain why the man was not speaking.
• In The Shield, the Strike Team pretend to be about to execute a member of the Russian mafia by attaching explosives to his body, in an effort to encourage his accomplices to give them information; it is implied that their intention is not to actually carry it out, but merely to "look convincing".

Literature and publications

• In both the novel Fight Club and its film adaptation, mock executions, referred to as "human sacrifices", are carried out by members of Project Mayhem in order to evoke a sense of one's "here and now" existence.
• In the Raymond E. Feist novel Shadow of a Dark Queen, a group of men are led to a mock execution to form a regiment of men who are above the fear of death.
• In the Leo Tolstoy novel War and Peace, Pierre Bezukhov is led to believe that he has been sentenced to death when Napoleon's soldiers force him to watch the execution of Russian captives.
• In Puccini's Tosca, the eponymous heroine bargains with Scarpia that her lover will suffer only a mock execution (but the villain secretly orders his death).
• In Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger, the crew of a United States Coast Guard cutter stage a mock execution to coerce a confession out of the two murderers of a man and his family.

References

External links

• Newsweek: Inspector General Report Reveals CIA Conducted Mock Executions - video report by Democracy Now!