Sweden: 103 years without the death penalty
On November 23, Sweden marks 103 years since the last execution of a death sentence took place.
The last execution in Sweden was enforced on November 23, 1910, when Johan Alfred Ander was beheaded by guillotine, after being sentenced to death for the murder of a 24-year-old cashier during a robbery in a shop in Stockholm.
The last execution took place in a prison located in the center of Stockholm on the small island of Långholmen. The prison was closed in 1975 after nearly 250 years of existence. After the reconstruction, the detention center and the cells were turned into a hotel and a restaurant.
Now the facade of the building is decorated by a memorial sculpture - a symbolic representation of the guillotine and the face of an executed person.
The death penalty was officially abolished in Sweden in 1921. In 1972, the country abolished the death penalty and executions during the war.
Palina Stsepanenka, exclusively for the campaign “Human Rights Defenders against the Death Penalty in Belarus”
