Demise sentences will probably be changed with life imprisonment with aggravated arduous labour.
Printed On 11 Aug 2026
Lebanon’s parliament has handed a regulation to abolish capital punishment, making it the primary nation within the Center East to take action.
The Lebanese parliament’s speaker’s workplace stated lawmakers signed off on the laws Tuesday after making a number of amendments.
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A majority of the 128-member meeting voted in favour of ending the dying penalty, excluding the parliamentary bloc of Hezbollah.
Justice Minister Adel Nassar, who was in parliament, referred to as it a “historic step” for the nation.
The brand new system replaces the dying sentence with life imprisonment with aggravated arduous labour.
Whereas Lebanon has noticed an unofficial moratorium on executions since January 2004, courts have continued to situation dozens of dying sentences.
On the finish of 2025, 85 individuals had been dealing with dying sentences, in keeping with the Lebanese Ministry of Justice’s Directorate of Prisons.
‘Lasting authorized safety’
Rights group Amnesty Worldwide’s Center East and North Africa director, Heba Morayef, praised Lebanon’s transfer to finish capital punishment as “a serious milestone and a victory for human rights within the nation”.
“After greater than twenty years with out executions, right this moment’s step transforms a precarious hiatus in executions into lasting authorized safety upholding the fitting to life and bringing Lebanon in keeping with the worldwide development in the direction of abolition,” Morayef stated.
It’s unclear how aggravated arduous labour can be enforced, with some legislators saying the phrases of the brand new punishment should not but clear. Lebanon does have the punishment of arduous labour written into regulation and court docket choices, however even these have been not often enforced in recent times because of cash-strapped Lebanon’s lack of assets and capability inside its overcrowded prisons.
Lebanon’s abolition of the dying penalty comes as parliament additionally debates a controversial normal amnesty regulation, the most important because the finish of its 15-year civil conflict in 1990, that would scale back sentences and even launch some individuals convicted of violence offences.
Members of the family of Lebanese troopers and servicemen killed in assaults have repeatedly protested in opposition to the regulation, some saying they’d hoped to see the perpetrators who killed their members of the family executed somewhat than be issued diminished jail sentences.
