Lebanon's parliament voted Tuesday to abolish the death penalty, replacing it with life imprisonment and aggravated hard labor. The vote makes Lebanon the first country in the Arab world to eliminate capital punishment.
A majority of the 128-member parliament supported the decision, with the parliamentary bloc of Hezbollah being the only exception. Justice Minister Adel Nassar described the move as a "historic step" for the country.
Rights groups have welcomed the vote, which formalizes an unofficial moratorium on executions that has been in place since January 2004. Despite the moratorium, numerous death sentences were issued after 2004 but were subsequently suspended or commuted. Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon Researcher at Human Rights Watch, stated that Lebanon is "marking a final break from a cruel sentence that should never be imposed."
It remains unclear how the new punishment of aggravated hard labor will be implemented, as some legislators noted that the specifics of the penalty are not yet clearly defined. While hard labor is a recognized punishment in Lebanese law, its enforcement has been infrequent in recent years due to resource limitations and prison overcrowding.
The abolition of the death penalty comes as parliament is also debating a broad general amnesty law, the most significant since the end of the country's 15-year civil war in 1990. This proposed law could lead to reduced sentences or the release of individuals convicted of militant and drug-related offenses, with certain exceptions.
Some family members of Lebanese soldiers and servicemen who were killed or attacked by Islamist militant groups have protested the amnesty law, expressing a desire for the perpetrators to face execution rather than reduced prison terms.
Neither Hezbollah nor Lebanon's religious institutions, some of which permit the death penalty within their legal systems, had issued immediate comments on the parliamentary vote.