A US state exonerated twelve people convicted of witchcraft almost 400 years ago during colonial America.
Eleven of them had been hanged after trials for witchcraft in the state of Connecticut (northeast) in the middle of the 17th century, one having been spared.
Connecticut elected officials adopted a resolution to this effect on Thursday proclaiming their innocence and denouncing the sentences imposed on the nine women and two men as having been a “miscarriage of justice”.
An association of descendants, CT Witch Trial Exoneration Project, welcomed in a press release the vote of the elected officials after having led a campaign in favor of their posthumous rehabilitation.
Connecticut’s decision comes on the eve of the 376th anniversary of the very first hanging for witchcraft in New England, that of Alice Young.
Hundreds of people, mostly women, were accused of witchcraft in New England in the 17th century, notably during the famous Salem trials, in Massachusetts, between 1692 and 1693, dominated by fear, paranoia and superstitions.