PUBLIC EXECUTION AT BAR-BEACH, LAGOS (VICTORIA ISLAND)IT WAS NO LAUGHING MATTER IN LAGOS WHEN EIGHT NIGERIAN ROBBERS WERE EXECUTED

 Public Execution at Bar- Beach, Lagos (Victoria Island)It was no laughing matter in Lagos when eight Nigerian robbers were executed

Never in the annals of our nation has there been such a carnage and utter disregard for human life as we now experience. The time has called for immediate intervention of government.

 The government must revert to public execution by firing squads for offences that culminate into forcibly ending of innocent life.

 These include bank armed robberies, kidnappings of all forms, killing for rituals, mass killings as in gathering in places of worships and cannibals. 

The punishment is to include all aiders and abettors of all the categories of the aforementioned crimes.The punishment has some attributes if carried out properly. 

For example those that carried out the dastardly killings in Owo church should be given swift trial and if found guilty should be executed publicly in Owo. 

By witnessing the public execution, it will not only serve as deterrent but be seen as being held accountable and justice served in a lawful nation.

All cases of such should be tried and concluded at state capitals with alacrity instead of the Federal Capital. In order for the punishment to be effective, time is of the essence in meting out punishment close to the time crime was committed.

There is a legal Maxim: Justice delayed is justice denied. If we are to have a country that protects lives and properties as entrenched in the constitution, then there should the rule of law and violators should be held accountable and punishment should be carried out swiftly and glaringly for people to see.

 By doing so and when offenders are held accountable, people will stop seeing kidnapping as a profitable/lucrative business.

Those that were living witnesses to the wave of robberies that followed the civil war in the ‘70s will agree that the situation in the country then was bad for the cultural climate of the time; it was a reign of terror by the armed robbers that is similar to what we have now. 

The situation then prompted the military government to promulgate the Firing Squad Decree for any robbery with the use of dangerous weapons such as guns, daggers and even penknives. 

The decree went into effect in April of 1971 and notorious armed robber Babatunde  Folorunsho was caught alongside others like William Oyazimo and Joseph Ilobo. They were tried and found guilty and executed on July 24th 1971 at Lagos Bar beach.

This was soon followed by the trials of dare devil robbers like Dr. Ishola Oyenusi, and Lawrence Anini.

The wave of robberies had spread to the old Kwara State but there was ‘a no nonsense’judicial system. 

The names of Justice Adesiyun, Police Inspector Sunday Adewusi and Prosecutor Anthony Ekundayo readily come to mind. 

The team made a name for Kwara State as a ‘no go state’ for armed robbers. In their custody then were Lieutenant Usman and Mr. 

Felix Dumeh, who were tried and convicted for armed robberies after they were caught with deadly weapons and were publicly executed in Ilorin by firing squad.

The decree served what it was intended for; it deterred others and the wave of robberies died down immediately and for another twenty something years there was peace everywhere in the country until recently when people thought that they could get away with any crime, including murder.

 There is too much carnage with reckless abandon of human lives. Effort must be made to take back the country by all means necessary. The country is at the precipice of total destruction where nobody is safe

JEWS BEING ELECTROCUTED BY THE EINSATZKOMMANDO DURING OPERATION BARBAROSSA, LITHUANIA,1941

 Jews being executed by the Einsatzkommando during Operation Barbarossa, Lithuania, 1941

On Saturday 06 September 1941 or somewhere around this date, Einsatzcommando 3 murdered 412 Jewish men. Also 412 Jewish children were killed.

 A total of unspecified persons died on this location in Jurbarkas.

Source of this record: The so-called Jäger Report (full title: Complete tabulation of executions carried out in the Einsatzkommando 3 zone up to December 1, 1941)

 was written on 1 December 1941 by Karl Jäger, commander of Einsatzkommando 3 (EK 3), a killing unit of Einsatzgruppe A which was attached to Army Group North during the Operation Barbarossa.

 It is the most detailed and precise surviving chronicle of the activities of one individual Einsatzkommando, and a key record documenting the Holocaust in Lithuania as well as in Latvia and Belarus.

Th2e photo is most probably not in this area but an example of German execution units and their work.

THE DEATHS OF THE TWO CONVICTED MURDERER'S HANGED WITH LITTLE CEREMONY AT SEPARATE PRISONS AT 8AM ON 13 AUGUST MADE ONLY A COUPLEZK OF LINES IN THE NATIONAL PRESS

 The deaths of the two convicted murderers, hanged with little ceremony at separate prisons at 8am on 13 August made only a couplezk of lines in the national press,

As they were led to the gallows there was little fuss. No public outcry, no headlines indicated that the executions of Gwynne Evans and Peter Allen would be remembered as anything other than run-of-the-mill.

The deaths of the two convicted murderers, hanged with little ceremony at separate prisons at 8am on 13 August 1964, made only a couple of lines in the national press.

Exactly 50 years later, however, the names Evans and Allen – two criminals who bludgeoned a man to death to steal £10 – are a significant footnote in the annals of abolitionist history.

As the last two people executed in Britain, the macabre anniversary of their deaths at Strangeways prison in Manchester and Walton prison in Liverpool is generating more publicity than their crime and punishment ever did at the time.

Evans, 24, and Allen, 21, were unlucky with their timing. Two months after they were executed Labour came to power, bringing a Commons vote to suspend capital punishment for five years in the 1965 Murder Act, a move made permanent in 1969.

At the time of their convictions, the 1957 Homicide Act had already removed the automatic death penalty for all murders, though exceptions included any murder committed for theft.

The criminologist Steve Fielding, author of more than 20 books on British hangings, believes the lack of publicity was due to the fact that, by sensationalist standards, the Evans and Allen murder was "quite low key".

The two jobless Preston men travelled to the Cumbria home of John "Jack" West, a 53-year-old laundry van driver known to Evans, in a stolen car with Allen's wife and two children, on 7 April 1964. The two planned to rob the bachelor, but then killed him.

A neighbour in the village of Seaton, awoken by a suspicious noise, saw the car disappearing down the street. West's semi-naked body was later found in a pool of blood.

Within 48 hours both men had been arrested and charged, police having been greatly aided by Evans leaving his raincoat at the scene. They were convicted in June, and had their appeals against the death sentences rejected on 21 July. A date for execution was set for 13 August.

IRANIAN WOMAN ZAHRA ESMAILI WAS SENTENCED TO DEATH IN THE CASE OF HER ABUSIVE HUSBAND'S MURDER, WHO WAS A N OFFICIAL OF THE MINISTRY OF INTELLIGENCE OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC.

 Iranian woman Zahra Esmaili was sentenced to death in the case of her ‌a‌b‌u‌s‌i‌v‌e‌ husband's ‌m‌u‌r‌d‌e‌r‌, who was an official of the Ministry of Intelligence of the Islamic Republic.

The judges believed that the ‌m‌u‌r‌d‌e‌r‌ was committed by the victim's children and the mother accepted the responsibility to save them, but they sentenced her to death according to confession. 

Zahra Esmaili was handed over to the death squad in February 2019. 

Before the execution, sixteen people were ‌h‌a‌n‌g‌e‌d‌ in front of her and she had a heart attack and died before the execution of the sentence، 

but the regime's ‌b‌a‌r‌b‌a‌r‌i‌c‌ guards still carried out the sentence on her corpse. Yes, they hanged a dead woman!

HOW AFRICAN MALE SLAVES WERE RAPED BY SLAVES OWNERS AND DEALERS-A BITTER HISTORY

 How African Male Slaves Were R!ped By Slave Owners And Dealers – A Bitter History

There are lots of dark stories about the 400 years of slavery, and beyond. Many of these dark tales are told with a little ease, but others are told with great difficulty. 

We at Liberty Writers Africa strongly feel that thousands more of such stories and accounts died with their victims. 

But for those who lived to tell their sad realities, we applaud their courage and will do our part in telling the stories, with a heavy heart.

If there is one tool that was more brutal than whips and guns, during slavery, it was RAPE. 

Vicious and animalistic rape of African slaves in America, the Caribbean, and other parts of the world where African slaves were sold to. 

The rape of women and girls by their slave masters and merchants, on ships and plantations, has been told in great length.

But the degrading rape of African slave men has not fully been accounted for. This was mostly because men did not get pregnant and give birth to bi-racial kids as proof.  

Also, men were shy to speak of their experiences, so their tales were hidden in the dark corners of their memories.

It is recorded that the raping of men, was very popular in the Southern parts of America and Cuba. It was a huge part of the slave system and culture by the Spanish enslavers.

Many of these men were raped on ships when they were transported and also at secret farms.

 There were also season plantations for homosexual slave owners which were very popular and common in the Caribbean. 

On many occasions, the slave men would resist and fight, but they get killed. Well, some men would rather die than get sodomized.

Because of the great physique, strength, and stamina, many African slave men were forced by the slavers wives to sleep with them when their masters were away. 

The rape of enslaved African men was a well-known secret for many years during the slave trade days. Below we will outline some of the unpopular sexual exploitations of the men during slavery.

This act of “buck breaking” or “Bot bursting” involves, white slave owners and merchants raping a male slave in front of the public or entire plantation to embarrass him and cause him to feel less of a man. 

This heinous act became popular when there were increased cases of slave rebellion.

The men would first be stripped naked and whipped in the presence of a crowd, and after that, raped by the slave owners or merchants as a warning to other slaves. 

The targets were mainly the brave men, who were leaders in the plantations.

To make matters more gruesome and unbearable, the slave owners make the African slave men with families to have sex with each other in front of their families. 

Or they were raped in the presence of their sons. Many of the men killed themselves or ran away after this.

Buck breaking started from ships and continued in plantations. It was a way of stripping the male slaves of their pride and power to protect their families. And it was also a way for slave owners to show dominance.

FARKHUNDA MALIKZADA, A 27 YEAR OLD STUDENT, AND PILOT FROM KABUL AFGHANISTAN

 Farkhunda Malikzada, a 27-year-old student; and Pilot From Kabul Afghanistan.

In the pictures that are shown below, is pleading for her life. Why?, She was accused of burning the Quran (a Islamic holy book), these claims will later come out as false.

A cellphone video that was captured by a bystander which witnessed the attack, shows hundreds of mostly young men in a mob beating the young woman, with her face covered in blood.

The mob dragged Farkhunda into the street and beat and stomped her. They threw large bricks at her, then placed into the road and run over with a car.

They dragged her body from the back of a Toyota hatchback for almost 100m. Police offered no resistance, and directed traffic around the scene.

After she was confirmed dead, they decided to dump the corpse in a dry patch of the Kabul River and set it afire.

The killing of Farkhunda is a reminder of the bleak situation for women's rights in many of Islamic states. She remains a devastating symbol of how dangerous life still is for women.

YOUNG MUSLIM WOMAN IN SAVAGELY LASHED 23 TIMES FOR BEING IN 'CLOSE PROXIMITY' TO HER BOYFRIEND-BREAKING SHARIA LAW

 Young Muslim woman in savagely lashed 23 Times for being in 'close proximity' to her boyfriend-breaking sharia law

Hendra, an academic in Indonesia’s semi-autonomous region of Aceh, vaguely remembers the first time he saw a public caning take place in his 20s. It was years ago and it didn’t faze him much.

The 35-year-old cannot even remember what the people were accused of – just that they were taken to a public square at a local mosque and flogged with a rattan cane in front of a crowd of onlookers.

But in recent years, Hendra, a lecturer in communications at Ar-Raniry University in Banda Aceh, has started to feel differently.

Now he avoids public canings. “I always think, ‘Imagine if that was a member of my family’,” he told Al Jazeera. “Do these people really deserve this?”

Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra, is one of Indonesia’s most religiously conservative areas, and is the only part of the archipelago to impose penalties on its residents under Islamic law.

Once one of the most powerful Islamic sultanates in Southeast Asia, the area had long used an informal kind of Islamic law mixed with local laws, known as “hukum adat”. 

But the legislation was enhanced when Aceh’s long-running separatist conflict ended in 2005. The laws have been gradually expanded to more offences, most recently in 2014.

“Sharia police monitor public behaviour and enforce the rules, including in relation to the clothing women choose to wear,” Usman Hamid, the executive director of Amnesty Indonesia, told Al Jazeera.

“People can be subjected to public canings for a range of offences, including gay sex, which carries a penalty of up to 100 lashes, sex before or outside marriage, gambling and the sale and consumption of alcohol.”

THE EXECUTION OF TWO GIRLS BY HANGING IS TRUE MODERN TYPES OF THE DEATH PENALTY

The execution of two girls by hanging is true. Modern types of the death penalty

The executioner stood on the victim's bound hands, and on this makeshift stirrup he jumped with all his might. This method of execution was called "brittle withers".

Other executioners, such as those in Lyon and Marseille, preferred to place the slipknot over the back of the head. There was a second deaf knot on the rope, which did not allow her to slip under the chin.

With this method of hanging, the executioner stood not on his hands, but on the head of the convict, pushing it forward so that the deaf knot fell on the larynx or trachea, which often led to their rupture.

Today, in accordance with the "English method", the rope is placed under the left side of the lower jaw. The advantage of this method is the high probability of spinal fracture.

In the US, the loop knot is placed behind the right ear. This method of hanging leads to a strong stretching of the neck, and sometimes to tearing off the head.

Execution in Cairo in 1907.

Engraving by Clement Auguste Andrieu. 19th century Private count

Recall that hanging by the neck was not the only widespread method. Previously, hanging by the limbs was used quite often, but, as a rule, as an additional torture.

By the hands they hung over the fire, by the legs - giving the victim to be eaten by dogs, such an execution lasted for hours and was terrible.

Hanging by the armpits was fatal in itself and guaranteed prolonged agony. The pressure of the belt or rope was so strong that it stopped the blood circulation and led to paralysis of the pectoral muscles and suffocation.

Many convicts, suspended in this way for two or three hours, were removed from the gallows already dead, and if they were alive, then after this terrible torture they did not live long.

 Adult defendants were sentenced to such a "slow hanging", forcing them to confess to a crime or complicity.

Children and teenagers were often hanged for capital crimes as well. For example, in 1722, the younger brother of the robber Kartush, who was not even fifteen years old, was executed in this way.

Some countries have sought to extend the execution procedure. So, in the 19th century in Turkey, the hands of the hanged were not tied so that they could grab the rope above their heads and hold on until their strength left them and after a long agony death came.

According to European custom, the bodies of the hanged were not removed until they began to decompose.

Hence the gallows, nicknamed "gangster", which should not be confused with ordinary gallows. On them hung not only the bodies of the hanged, but also the corpses of convicts who were killed in other ways.

"Gangster gallows" personified royal justice and served as a reminder of the prerogatives of the nobility, and at the same time were used to intimidate criminals. For greater edification, they were placed along crowded roads, mainly on a hillock.

Their design varied depending on the title of the lord who held court: a nobleman without a title - two beams, the owner of the castle - three, the baron - four, the count - six, the duke - eight, the king - as much as he considered necessary.

The royal "bandit gallows" of Paris, introduced by Philip the Handsome, were the most famous in France: they usually "flaunted" fifty to sixty hanged.

They towered in the north of the capital approximately where Buttes-Chaumont is now located - at that time this place was called the "Hills of Montfaucon". Soon the gallows itself began to be called that.

AN IRANIAN-DUTCH WOMAN ARRESTED AFTER TAKING PART IN ANTI- GOVERNMENT PROTESTS IN IRAN IN 2009, HAS BEEN HANG FOR DRUG SMUGGLING. HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANISATIONS SAID THE ALLEGATIONS WERE FABRICATED BY THE GOVERNMENT

 an Iranian-Dutch woman arrested after taking part in anti-government protests in Iran in 2009, has been hanged for drug smuggling. Human rights organizations said the allegations were fabricated by the government 

Iran on Saturday hanged an Iranian-Dutch woman for drug smuggling after initially arresting her for anti-government protests, the Tehran prosecutor's office said.

Zahra Bahrami's execution takes the total number of people hanged in Iran so far this year to 66 -- on average more than two a day -- according to an AFP tally based on media reports.

The Netherlands summoned Iran's ambassador in the wake of the hanging, the Dutch foreign ministry said.

"A drug trafficker named Zahra Bahrami, daughter of Ali, was hanged early on Saturday morning after she was convicted of selling and possessing drugs," the Tehran prosecutor's office said.

Bahrami, a 46-year-old Iranian-born naturalised Dutch citizen, was reportedly arrested in December 2009 after joining a protest against the government while visiting relatives in the Islamic republic.

The prosecutor's office confirmed on Saturday that she had been arrested for "security crimes."

But elaborating on the drug smuggling charge, the office said Bahrami had used her Dutch connections to smuggle narcotics into Iran.

"The convict, a member of an international drug gang, smuggled cocaine to Iran using her Dutch connections and had twice shipped and distributed cocaine inside the country," it said.

During a search of her house, authorities found 450 grams of cocaine and 420 grams of opium, the prosecutor's office said, adding that investigations revealed she had sold 150 grams of cocaine in Iran.

"The revolutionary court sentenced her to death for possessing 450 grams of cocaine and participating in the selling of 150 grams of cocaine," it said.

The Netherlands had been seeking details about Bahrami's case and had accused the Iranian authorities of refusing the Dutch embassy access to the prisoner because they did not recognise her dual nationality.

Foreign ministry spokesman Bengt van Loosdrecht told AFP in The Hague that the ministry had not yet received confirmation of the execution.

"The minister has summoned Iran's ambassador in order to elucidate this piece of information," he said.

On January 5, Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal expressed "extreme concern" about Bahrami, and said that he had "asked the Iranian authorities to provide immediate clarification" about her case.

"We insist on information, the possibility to provide her with consular assistance, and a fair course of justice," Rosenthal said in a statement at the time.

Dutch broadcaster Radio Netherlands Worldwide, quoting Bahrami's daughter Banafsheh Najebpour, had reported earlier this month that Bahrami was awaiting trial in a second capital case in which she was accused of being in an armed opposition group.

Bahrami's execution takes the total number of people hanged so far this year in the Islamic republic to 66, according to an AFP tally based on media reports.

There has been a spike in hangings this year in Iran, especially of convicted drug smugglers.

THE WORST EXECUTION THAT SHOKE: ON THIS DATE IN 1964-ONE DAY SHY OF HIS 30TH BIRTHDAY-ALGERIAN OFFICER MOHAMMED CHABANI WAS EXECUTED AS A TRAITOR.

 The Worst Execution that Shoke: On this date in 1964 — one day shy of his 30th birthday — Algerian officer Mohamed Chabani was executed as a traitor.

It’s a verdict that posterity has washed its hands of; Chabani (other transliterations include Shabani and Chaabani) was officially rehabilitated in 1984 and his name decorates public spaces in Algeria.

But in 1964, when Algeria was but two years into her post-France independence, this former FLN fighter become Algeria’s youngest colonel was governor of the fourth military district in Biskra when he fell foul of the Defence Minister Houari Boumediene.

Boumediene was in the process in this interim of consolidating power to his own circle; the following year he would overthrow President Ahmed Ben Bella and rule Algeria until his death in 1978. Boumediene allegedly feared that Chabani would form an independent bloc that could oppose him, and attempted to have the young commander assassinated.

“How long is it since you began to travel by short stages and side-tracks?” the Marquise de Merteuil demanded of Valmont in a different context. “My friend, when you want to get somewhere — post horses and the main road!”

Boumediene’s main road was to arrest Chabani for a supposed separatist plot to break away oil-rich southern Algeria and have him shot in Oran.

On this date in 1957, Algerian revolutionary Larbi Ben M’Hidi — more familiarly referred to as Si Larbi or Ben M’Hidi — was extrajudicially executed in French custody.

was one of the founders of the militant nationalist National Liberation Front (FLN) and was a critical commander in the guerrilla war against French occupation, the Battle of Algiers.

Small wonder he also features prominently in the cinematic masterpiece of the same name, where he and his opposite number, the French Col. Mathieu, are bracingly clear-eyed as to their respective sides’ necessary forms of terror.

In this scene,* for instance, the captured Ben M’Hidi is asked by a journalist whether it is not cowardly to have women kill people with bombs hidden in their baskets.

“Isn’t it even more cowardly to attack defenseless villages with napalm bombs that kill many thousands of times more?” the shackled M’Hidi replies. “Obviously, planes would make things easier for us. Give us your bombers, sir, and you can have our baskets.”

EWA PARADIES (17 DECEMBER 1920-4 JULY 1946) WAS A NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP OVERSEER HANG TO DEATH

 Ewa Paradies (17 December 1920 – 4 July 1946) was a Nazi concentration camp overseer hang to death

On this date in 1946, officials of Soviet-occupied Poland publicly hanged eleven convicted war criminals of the Stutthof concentration camp.

Set up immediately upon Germany’s September 1, 1939 invasion of Poland and not liberated until after official German capitulation in 1945, Stutthoff handled over 100,000 prisoners during its long service.

This day’s condemned — camp commandant Johann Pauls, five male kapos, and five female guards — were the product of the first of four Stutthof trials held in 1946-1947.

At a hill in Gdansk known as Biskupia Gorka (Bishop Hill), upon a specially-erected row of four T-shaped double gallows centered around a pi-shaped triple gallows, and before a crowd of thousands,

the doomed eleven were noosed on the back of military trucks which then drove away to leave them strangling to death with a “short drop” hanging.

The following gut-twisting images are among a number to be found here.

Above: on one end of the gallows row, the truck has just pulled away from Jenny Wanda Barkmann — a modish Hamburg lass in her mid-20’s known to Stutthof prisoners as “the Beautiful Specter” for her cruelty.

Down the row, one can see that some of the prisoners are already swinging, while others have not yet been dropped.

Upon hearing her sentence, Jenny Barkmann retorted, “Life is indeed a pleasure, and pleasures are usually short.” (More about Barkmann, including trial photos, here.)

In this closer view of her, just as in the first photo, she is still alive and struggling. Next to her, Ewa Paradies, another guard, is prepared for the same fate.

The central triple gallows. Commandant Johann Pauls hangs in the middle with Gerda Steinhoff — one of the senior female guards — in the foreground. The line of five male kapos recedes behind them into the enormous crowd of onlookers.

There’s more about Stutthof’s history at the Holocaust Research Project, and at the current memorial facility’s home page.

JAMES ZWERG, 21 YEARS OLD, WAS THE ONLY WHITE MEMBER OF THE FREEDOM RIDE'S, WHICH SOUGHT TO DESEGREGATE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION.

 James Zwerg, 21 years old, was the only white member of the Freedom Rides, which sought to desegregate public transportation.

“Segregation must be stopped. It must be broken down. Those of us on the Freedom Ride will continue…. No matter what happens we are dedicated to this. W

e will take the beatings. We are willing to accept death. We are going to keep coming until we can ride anywhere in the South.”

These words escaped from the battered lips of James Zwerg as he lay in a hospital bed in Montgomery. He, along with the other Freedom Riders of the Civil Rights Movement, had been subjected to the most gruesome of violence.

One of their buses had been fire-bombed, while the mob attempted to keep the door shut so the activists would burn to death inside. White supremacists with bricks, clubs and fists surrounded the Freedom Riders at each stop, howling with hatred and burning with violence.

They hated James Zwerg most of all. James Zwerg was white.

Zwerg first decided to get involved in the Civil Rights Movement when his friend Robert Carter gave him a copy of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Stride to Freedom.

He began to notice that his friend Carter, an African American, was not accorded the same rights as he was. He was denied membership in some organizations. And he couldn’t eat at the same restaurants.

So in 1960, Zwerg joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a Civil Rights group that organized sit-ins at lunch counters and was determined to desegregate the South.

This group was formed by the famous John Lewis, a Civil Rights hero and later a Congressman from Georgia. His very first action with the SNCC ended violently:

Zwerg bought two movie tickets to an all-white theatre, handed one to his black comrade, and attempted to walk through the door. Instead, he was knocked unconscious with a monkey wrench and dumped on the sidewalk.

Zwerg, however, was ready to live the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous quote: “We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering.”

In 1961, he joined the Freedom Rides as they left Washington on May 4^th for Alabama and Mississippi, the dark heart of American racism.

One bus was firebombed in Aniston. The Freedom Riders continued in the surviving bus. When they arrived in Montgomery, Alabama, the mob was waiting. Famous historian Tayor Branch described the carnage:

“One of the men grabbed Zwerg’s suitcase and smashed him in the face with it. Others slugged him to the ground, and when he was dazed beyond resistance, one man pinned Zwerg’s head between his knees so that others could take turns hitting him.

As they steadily knocked out his teeth, and his face and chest were streaming blood, a few adults on the perimeter put their children on their shoulders to view the carnage.”

Zwerg was taken to the hospital, where the photo of his battered face was beamed around the country.

He refused to accept praise for his actions, stating later that, “There was nothing particularly heroic in what I did. If you want to talk about heroism, consider the black man who probably saved my life.

This man in coveralls, just off work, happened to walk by as my beating was going and said ‘Stop beating that kid. If you want to beat someone, beat me.’ And they did. He was still unconscious when I left the hospital. I don’t know if he lived or died.”

James Zwerg was presented with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Freedom Award by Martin Luther King Jr. later in 1961, but he never felt like a hero.

He entered the seminary after the victories of the Civil Rights Movement, and became a pastor in the United Church of Christ.

James Zwerg is the embodiment of the dedication needed to effect real change in a world where justice is not passively received, but must be actively fought for.

The history of social reform tells us that three things are needed to achieve social change and end great injustice:

To confront the culture, to expose the injustice, and to accept the resulting persecution. James Zwerg was willing to do all three, accepting more persecution than most ever will.

James Zwerg was an inspiring hero, and for a very simple reason: He was willing to stand up for his persecuted neighbours, and he was willing to accept whatever consequences accompanied his actions. James Zwerg’s legacy is incontrovertible.

What will our legacy look like?

RUTH ELLIS WAS THE LAST WOMAN TO BE HANGED IN BRITAIN-AN EXECUTION THAT APPALLED THE WORLD

 Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in Britain — an execution that appalled the world.

 On Saturday we told how she was beaten and abused by the men in her life before finally snapping and shooting dead her faithless, violent lover David Blakely.

 Today, in our final gripping extract from a forensically researched new book, we reveal how vital evidence that would have saved her from the gallows was ignored . . .

Two hours after the shooting, while David Blakely’s body was lying in the mortuary, Ruth Ellis was questioned by three detectives in Hampstead police station. It was 11.30pm.

 One of the detectives recalled: ‘She had a cigarette and she was  completely calm . . . she really couldn’t care less what was going to happen to her.’

She was cautioned: ‘You are not obliged to say anything at all about this unless you wish to do so, but whatever you say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence.’

‘I am guilty,’ Ruth said decisively. Then she hesitated: ‘I am rather confused.’

She began answering the questions, which then became her statement. 

She was asked where she got the gun. She explained that it had been given to her as security for money about three years ago in a club by a man whose name she did not remember.

Then she uttered the crucial words: ‘When I put the gun in my bag, I intended to find David and shoot him.’

The police were puzzled. Ruth seemed fragile, only 5ft 2in and less than 7st, and calm and quiet rather than driven by raging emotions.

 Moreover, her story about the gun did not add up: it was too well-oiled to have been left in a drawer for three years.

The following day Ruth was told she would be driven to nearby Hampstead magistrates’ court to be formally charged with Blakely’s murder.

She nodded, and then remarked: ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I will hang.’

That same day Desmond Cussen gave a statement to police. He described the past two years, his relationship with Ruth and admitted to competing for Ruth with Blakely.

He also discussed his part as her unofficial chauffeur and the beatings Ruth had received from Blakely.

But while he admitted to having spent Easter Sunday with Ruth and her ten-year-old son Andre, he claimed to have dropped her off at her rented room at 7.30pm and said he hadn’t seen her since.

What he did not say was that he had not only given Ruth the gun, but had also taught her how to use it — and had driven her to the Hampstead street where she later killed Blakely.

Though he did eventually confess all this to Ruth’s solicitor, John Bickford, it was never brought up at her trial — because Bickford thought it would affect the chances of achieving a verdict of manslaughter rather than murder.

It was Bickford’s job to defend Ruth, but she did not make it easy. She was determined to shield Cussen and was vehement that she did not want her life to be spared.

She firmly rejected his request that she plead insanity. ‘I took David’s life and I don’t ask you to save mine,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want to live.’

As she waited in Holloway for her trial, warders noted she was extremely quiet and co-operative. 

With visitors she made bright small talk — ‘almost as though we were at a tea party,’ noted one in bewilderment — and spent her days reading.

She put on several pounds, probably because she was eating a proper diet for the first time in her life, and wrote polite letters thanking friends and well-wishers.

She cried only once — when she asked for, and was given, photographs of Blakely’s corpse.

Today it seems clear that, driven to the edge of madness by her ill- treatment at the hands of Blakely, she was suffering from post- traumatic stress.

But in 1955 the term did not exist. Nor did the defence of diminished responsibility, which would almost certainly have saved her from the gallows.

She had been abused all her life. She had just lost her baby after being viciously beaten by the man she loved, and was desperately unwell.