The motivations for executing suspected witches were complex, according to people who have studied witchcraft.
The Malian Army has been accused of executing suspected militants, and has faced accusations of torture and other mistreatment.
They were accused by Iraqis of beating prisoners, torturing them with electric drills and sometimes executing suspects.
Human rights and church groups accuse them of forcibly recruiting young teenagers, kidnapping children as young as 4 and executing suspected right-wing paramilitaries after secret trials.
From 1647, when Alice Young of Windsor was hung for witchcraft, to 1663, when the state's taste for executing suspected witches began to wane, Connecticut convicted and executed more witches than anywhere else in colonial America.
In 63 BCE, Julius Caesar made that point to a Roman Senate considering executing suspected domestic terrorists without a trial -- and he lost the argument.
Prisoners who had escaped from the damaged National Penitentiary roamed the city center, and police executed suspected criminals in broad daylight.
In the eighties, Iran's government, like those of Cuba and the U.S.S.R., arrested, tortured, and executed suspected dissidents and blocked much foreign travel.
They burned whole villages, executed suspected guerrillas and felt justified in using any interrogation technique at hand, including the water cure.
Leslie explained that he understood that the police regularly executed suspects they apprehended, when he and other reporters weren't around.
