This is a list of people who have acted as official executioners. Algeria Alger Monsieur d'Alger: The Executioners of the French Republic In 1870 the Republic of France abolished all local executioners and named the executioner of Algiers, Antoine Rasseneux, Éxécuteur des Arrêts Criminels en Algérie, which became France's official description of the executioner of Algeria's occupation. From then on there would be one only executioner to carry out death sentences for all of Algeria. Since the colony's executioner was required to live in Algiers, people soon started to refer to him as "Le Monsieur d'Alger" ("The Man From Algiers"). Upon his nomination, Rasseneux was permitted to choose four among France's and Algeria's former local executioners to be his aides. Australia Austria Hall in Tirol Meran Salzburg Steyr Vienna Belgium Brazil After 1808, during the Portuguese-Brazilian Kingdom (1808–1822) and the Empire (1822–1889), when Brazil's States were still called "Provinces" and the currency was called "Reis", Brazil had factually abolished torture but was a busy death penalty country. Method of execution was public hanging by an ultra-short drop of approximately 90 cm (2' 9 11/2"), with the executioner, after having activated the trap door or pushed the convict, according to the gallows's structure, climbed a ladder and launched himself rope downwards, hitting on the convict's shoulders with his weight. Executioners generally were selected among convicts of capital crimes who had their death sentences stayed for indefinite terms or even commuted for life without parole, and who in exchange for their stays or commutations had to carry out the executions ordered by law. Executioners were, whenever possible, selected from among slaves convicted for a capital crime. And except for the province of Rio Grande do Norte, executioners had obligatorily to be of African descent. As stayed or commuted convicts, executioners consequently lived as inmates in the prisons of the respective towns where they were based. When an execution was to be carried out elsewhere in his area, the executioner would be transported to the place of execution in chains and sleep in the local prison; after an attempt of murder against Fortunato José in 1834, prisons started separating the executioners from other inmates. In the province of Rio Grande do Norte, the executioner had always to be the convict scheduled to die next after an execution, so that province's last execution had to be carried out by a firing squad, after the