1920: Four denunciators of Laon

ExecutedToday.com ^ | May 15, 2020 | Alphonse Lemonon

[CheshireTheCat]

...[Almost at the moment when Joan of Arc was being canonized with all the clerical ceremonies at Rome [this occurred on May 16, 1920 -ed.], four political prisoners — one a woman — were tied to stakes and shot according to military and civic ceremony near Paris. The tragic and instructive narrative is here told in a translation from the most popular Paris Newspaper — Le Petit Journal, May 16, 1920.]

FOUR of the condemned informers of Laon, of which affair one has not forgotten the dolorous echo, Georges Toque, Moise Lemoine, Leander Herbert and the woman Alice Aubert were shot yesterday morning, at Vincennes, and if it were an affecting execution, it assuredly was to them. Two of them fell while swearing to their innocence and crying “Viva la France!”

The Last Awakening. All four were awakened at 4 a.m. Some instants before the officers charged with the transfer of the condemned to execution had presented themselves at several prisons; some at the prison de la Sante where Toque and Lemoine were confined, others at Cherchi-Midi where Herbert was detained, and a third group at the prison de Saint-Lazare, where one other, Alice Aubert, condemned of the same affair, was held. She occupied a cell with Helen Favre, who had been reprieved....

[Peter ODonnell]

Horrendous reading, and a cautionary tale about the potential for bad actors to take vengeance on personal enemies in times of civil unrest. Several of these victims declared their innocence. I hope we do not face similar times if woke socialism takes over our societies to the point of eliminating perceived “enemies of the state.”

[Enterprise]

These people were evidently charged with having spied for Germany in WWI. The article goes into depth about their last moments, but it doesn’t give much detail about the trial or evidence.