Mock execution

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A mock execution is a method of psychological torture, whereby the subject is made to believe that he is being led to his execution. This usually involves blindfolding the subject, making him recount last wishes, or making him dig his own grave, and sometimes it can go as far as forcing the victim to watch a single or multiple real life executions taking place under the same circumstances to make the victim believe he or she is next. Discharging a firearm near (but not at) the victim, or firing blanks, might end the mock execution.

It is hoped that by making the subject believe that he is to be executed they will be inflicted with severe psychological trauma. This may eventually lead to a break down where valuable information could be extracted, or it might act as a warning that future infractions may bring about a real execution.

Alternatively, a mock execution can be carried out where both a "shooter" and a "victim" collaborate with an interrogator who hopes to coerce a statement out of a subject who is forced to watch. Mock executions are popular 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 movie Inside Man, or V for Vendetta.

[edit] 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 literary works.
On 23 March 2007, eight British servicemen were detained for three days, after Iran said they had entered Iranian territorial waters, which Britain denied. They were released unharmed, but during their detention, according to former detainee Marine Scott Fallon, they endured a mock execution.^[1]
Reports of mock executions carried out by the US Marines on detainees in Iraq have surfaced in December 2004,^[2] as the ACLU 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.
Putin & FSB critic Anna Politkovskaya was subjected to a mock execution using a multiple-launch rocket system BM-21 Grad while she was reporting from lawless Chechnya.

[edit] Examples in fiction

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 the 1987 film The Untouchables, during a raid on the Canadian border, one of Al Capone’s bookkeepers agrees to provide Elliot Ness with information after Sean Connery’s character, Jim Malone, 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.
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 both the novel and movie versions of Fight Club, mock executions are carried out by members of Project Mayhem, and referred to as "human sacrifices."
In the TV series, 24, Jack Bauer gets terrorist Syed Ali to reveal a bomb plot by carrying out a mock execution of Ali's son and then threatening to "execute" the rest of his family.