September 22, 1949 - Hamida Djandoubi
His place in history rests on a grim distinction: the last person to be lawfully executed by guillotine in France, and the last to be beheaded by judicial decree anywhere in the Western world. The crimes that brought him to that end — the coercion, prolonged torture, and killing of a young woman he had forced into prostitution — represent an extreme of calculated cruelty against a specific victim. France abolished capital punishment four years after his execution in 1977, closing an era of state-sanctioned beheading that had endured for centuries.
From Wikipedia
Hamida Djandoubi (Arabic: حميدة جندوبي, romanized: Ḥamīda Jandūbī; 22 September 1949 – 10 September 1977) was a Tunisian criminal who was executed by guillotine in France after having been convicted of the kidnapping, torture and murder of Élisabeth Bousquet, a 21-year-old woman whom he had forced into prostitution. Djandoubi was the last person to be lawfully executed by beheading anywhere in the Western world.
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