Garrote

From the torture museum of Freiburg im Breisgau

A garrote can be made of different materials, including ropes, cloth, cable ties, fishing lines, nylon, guitar strings, telephone cord or piano wire.[2][3][4] A stick may be used to tighten the garrote; the Spanish word refers to the stick itself.[5] In Spanish, the term may also refer to a rope and stick used to constrict a limb as a torture device.[2][6]

Since World War II, the garrote has been regularly employed as a weapon by soldiers as a silent means of killing sentries and other enemy personnel.[3][4] Instruction in the use of purpose-built and improvised garrottes is included in the training of many elite military units and special forces.[4] A typical military garrote consists of two wooden handles attached to a length of flexible wire; the wire is looped over a sentry's head and pulled taut in one motion.[3][4] Soldiers of the French Foreign Legion have used a particular type of double-loop garrote (referred to as la loupe), where a double coil of rope or cord is dropped around a victim's neck and then pulled taut. Even if the victim pulls on one of the coils, the other is tightened.[4]

Garrote-like assassination techniques were widely employed in 17th- and 18th-century India, particularly by the Thuggee cult.[2] Practitioners used a yellow silk or cloth scarf called a rumāl.[2] The Indian version of the garrote frequently incorporates a knot at the center intended to aid in crushing the larynx, decreasing the communication capabilities of the victim, while someone applies pressure to the victim's back, usually using a foot or knee.

In this 15th-century depiction of the burning of Albigensians after an auto da fé, the condemned had been garroted previously. It is one of the first depictions of a garrote. Pedro Berruguete, Saint Dominic Presiding over an Auto-da-fé.

The garrote (Latin: laqueus) is known to have been used in the first century BC in Rome. It is referred to in accounts of the Second Catilinian Conspiracy, where conspirators including Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura were strangled with a laqueus in the Tullianum, and the implement is shown in some early reliefs, e.g., Répertoire de Reliefs grecs et romains, tome I, p. 341 (1919).[7] It was also used in the Middle Ages in Spain and Portugal. It was employed during the conquista of the Americas, notably in the execution of the Inca emperor Atahualpa.

It was intended as a more merciful form of execution than death by burning, where heretics who converted to Christianity after their conviction would receive a quick strangulation from the Spanish Inquisition. A later version of the garrote used an iron collar with a large metal screw in the back. The theory was that when the screw was tightened, it would crush the brain stem and kill the victim instantly. But if the screw missed the point where the brain meets the spinal column, it would simply bore into their neck while the iron collar strangled him.[8]

In the Ottoman Empire, execution by strangulation was reserved for very high officials and members of the ruling family. Unlike the Spanish version, a bowstring was used instead of a tightening collar.[9]

During the Peninsular War of 1808–1814, French forces regularly used the garrote to execute Spanish guerrilleros, priests, and other opponents of Napoleonic rule. Around 1810 the earliest known metallic garrote appeared in Spain, and on 28 April 1828, the garrote was declared the sole method of executing civilians in that country. In May 1897, the last public garroting in Spain was performed in Barcelona. After that, all executions were performed inside prisons.

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