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TORTURE

Fury as executioner’s torture collection is sold

A French auction house is auctioning several hundred torture and execution devices, including hanging ropes and hand crushers, collected by one of France’s last executioners. Rights groups have condemned the show as "shocking".

Fury as executioner's torture collection is sold

Fernand Meyssonnier faced death everyday throughout his career as one of France’s last executioners. But it turns out that his profession was also a hobby.

Torture objects dating back over 300 years, from a hand-crusher to inquisition torture chairs, are included in the sale, which takes place next Tuesday in Paris. Death-related objects such as a bathtub that was used to hold heads are also up for purchase.

Meysonnier worked as an executioner in French-ruled Algeria in the late 1950s and early 1960s and collected several hundred torture devices and items related to the death penalty. He died in 2008.

Rights groups have attacked the auction, held by auctioneers Cornette de Saint-Cyr, as “shocking and immoral”.

Amnesty International France, the Human Rights League and the Movement Against Racism (MRAP) have condemned the auction and say they will demonstrate against it.

The protesters say the government should not allow objects of torture to be sold privately. 

“If they have historical value, they should be in a museum, but we cannot let such objects, torture devices, be scattered around,”  MRAP official Henri Pouillot told AFP.

Meysonnier carried out 198 executions in Algeria between 1957 and the country’s independence in 1962, according to AFP. Organisers of the auction however insist none of the objects date back to Meysonnier’s activities in Algeria. 

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NORWAY

Body found in Oslo flat nine years after death

A man lay dead in his flat for nine years before being discovered in December, police in Oslo have said.

Body found in Oslo flat nine years after death
Photo by pichet wong from Pexels

The man, who was in his sixties, had been married more than once and also had children, national broadcaster NRK reports.

His name has been kept anonymous. According to neighbours he liked to keep to himself and when they didn’t see him, they thought he had moved or been taken to assisted living.

“Based on the details we have, it is obviously a person who has chosen to have little contact with others,” Grethe Lien Metild, chief of Oslo Police District, told NRK.

His body was discovered when a caretaker for the building he was living in requested police open the apartment so he could carry out his work.

“We have thought it about a lot, my colleagues and people who have worked with this for many years. This is a special case, and it makes us ask questions about how it could happen,” Metild said.

Police believe the man died in April 2011, based on a carton of milk and a letter that were found in his apartment. An autopsy has shown he died of natural causes.

READ ALSO: Immigrants in Norway more likely to be affected by loneliness

His pension was suspended in 2018 when the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) could not get in touch with him, but his bills were still paid out of his bank account and suspended pension fund.

Arne Krokan, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said the man’s death would have unlikely gone unnoticed for so long if he had died 30 years ago.

“In a way, it is the price we have paid to get digital services,” he said to NRK.

Last year 27 people were found in Oslo, Asker or Bærum seven days or more after dying. The year before the number was 32 people. Of these, one was dead for almost seven months before being discovered.

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