Lebanon Becomes First Middle Eastern Country to Abolish the Death Penalty
Lawmakers replaced capital punishment with life imprisonment and aggravated hard labor, ending an unofficial moratorium that had been in place since 2004.
- On Tuesday, Lebanon's Parliament abolished the death penalty, making it the first Arab country to replace capital punishment with life imprisonment with aggravated hard labor.
- The country has maintained an unofficial moratorium on executions since January 2004, while Parliament now debates a controversial general amnesty law, the largest since the 15-year civil war.
- Justice Minister Adel Nassar called the vote a "Historic step," while Ramzi Kaiss, a Lebanon Researcher at Human Rights Watch, described the move as "marking a final break from a cruel sentence."
- Hezbollah excepted its parliamentary bloc from the vote, and Family members of soldiers killed by Islamist militants protested, arguing for execution of perpetrators rather than reduced prison sentences.
- Cash-Strapped Lebanon faces significant challenges enforcing aggravated hard labor due to limited resources and overcrowded prisons, leaving the practical application of the new punishment unclear.
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151 Articles
On the 11th (local time), the Lebanese Parliament passed a bill abolishing the death penalty, becoming the first Arab nation in the Middle East to do so. The sentences of those already convicted of death will also be changed to life imprisonment. However, the bereaved families of Lebanese soldiers and police officers who lost loved ones in attacks by armed groups such as Hezbollah are protesting, arguing that the decision spares the lives of tho…
The country had no longer carried out executions since 2004, although capital punishments were still being imposed.
It's a First for the Arab World: an Abolished Death Penalty
Lebanon's parliament voted on Tuesday to abolish the death penalty, making it the first country in the Arab world to replace the sentence with life imprisonment with aggravated hard labor. The tiny Mediterranean country had committed to an unofficial moratorium on executions since January 2004, though dozens of death sentences...
The Lebanese parliament officially abolished the death penalty, becoming the first country in the Middle East to do so, drawing widespread praise from the international community and human rights organizations.
The United Nations (UN) on Tuesday welcomed Lebanon's decision to abolish the death penalty and called on other countries in the Middle East and North Africa to follow Beirut's example.
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