Eighteen executions were carried out between 1876 and 1943. The last executions, on 5 July 1943, were of the brothers Karmnu and Guzeppi Zammit who were hanged for the murder of Spiru Grech. The last execution for a crime other than murder took place during World War II, when Carmelo Borg Pisani was hanged for treason on 28 November 1942. Pisani was a Maltese-born man who had joined the Italian National Fascist Party and taken Italian citizenship in 1940. He returned to Malta on an espionage mission in anticipation of an Axis invasion of the island.