Capital punishment in Greece

Executions during the Greek War of Independence were carried out by firing squad, although when the monarchy introduced the Penal Code in 1834, beheading by guillotine became the only mode of execution. In 1847, difficulties in making the guillotine available for every execution made the government establish the firing squad as an alternative mode of execution. Both would be used until the firing squad was established as the only means of execution in 1929 (the last execution by guillotine took place in 1913). The last execution took place on 25 August 1972, when the 27-year-old Vassilis Lymberis was shot by firing squad for the murder of his wife, mother-in-law and two children on the island of Crete.

Capital punishment was abolished for peacetime crimes other than treason during wartime by article 7 of the Constitution of 1975. In 1997 Greece ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty; however, a reservation was made allowing for death penalty use for the most serious crimes, i.e. high treason, committed during wartime. Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights, providing for the abolition of the death penalty in peacetime, was ratified in 1998.

Greece abolished the death penalty for all crimes in 2004; in 2005, Greece ratified the Protocol No. 13 to the ECHR, concerning the abolition of the death penalty under all circumstances.

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