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A mock execution is a method of psychological torture, whereby the subject is made to believe that they are being led to their execution. This usually involves blindfolding the subject, making them recount last wishes, or making them dig their own grave, and sometimes it can go as far as forcing the victim to watch a single or multiple real life executions taking place under the same circumstances to make the victim believe he or she is next. Discharging a firearm near (but not at) the victim, might end the mock execution.

Water-boarding is a form of mock execution in which the victim is led to believe that continued resistance will lead to drowning.

It is hoped that by making the subject believe that they are to be executed they will be inflicted with severe psychological trauma. This may eventually lead to a break down where valuable information could be extracted, or it might act as a warning that future infractions may bring about a real execution.

Alternatively, a mock execution can be carried out where both a "shooter" and a "victim" collaborate with an interrogator who hopes to coerce a statement out of a subject who is forced to watch. Mock executions are popular in films and other entertainment as easy suspense can be created by having the protagonist subjected to what turns out to be only a mock execution, such as in the Spike Lee movie, Inside Man.

The small but significant minority^{[citation needed]} of customers of professional dominants that want them to role-play mock executions are presumably people with the paraphilia of autoassassinophilia, in which a person becomes sexually aroused at the thought of their own death at the hands of another.

The protagonist in The House of Yes is an example.

• In 1849, Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky became the victim of a now famous case of a mock execution. This traumatizing experience also shows up in his literary works.
• On 4 June 2004, eight British servicemen were detained for three days, after Iran said they had entered Iranian territorial waters, which Britain denied. They were released unharmed, but during their detention, according to former detainee Marine Scott Fallon, they endured a mock execution.^[1]
• Reports of mock executions carried out by the US Marines on detainees in Iraq have surfaced in December 2004,^[2] as the ACLU published internal documents of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The documents were written seven weeks after the publication of the photographs which triggered the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.