Lebanon becomes first Arab nation to scrap death penalty

In a landmark decision on Tuesday, Lebanon's parliament voted to abolish the death penalty, becoming the first country in the Arab world to replace capital punishment with life imprisonment with aggravated hard labor.

The vote, which received majority support in the 128-member parliament, was opposed by the parliamentary bloc of Hezbollah. Justice Minister Adel Nassar, present during the session, described the move as a "historic step" for the nation.

Lebanon has maintained an unofficial moratorium on executions since January 2004. Despite this, dozens of death sentences have been handed down in the intervening years, though they were typically suspended or commuted.

Human rights organizations, which have long campaigned for the formal abolition of the death penalty, welcomed the vote. Ramzi Kaiss, a Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch, stated that Lebanon is "marking a final break from a cruel sentence that should never be imposed," adding that "capital punishment is unique in its cruelty and finality and is plagued with arbitrariness, prejudice, and error."

Questions remain over the practical enforcement of the new punishment of aggravated hard labor. Some legislators noted that the terms of the sentence are not yet fully defined. While hard labor exists in Lebanese law and court decisions, it has rarely been enforced in recent years due to the country's severe economic crisis and the lack of capacity in its overcrowded prisons.

The abolition comes amid a separate and contentious parliamentary debate over a sweeping general amnesty law, the largest since the end of the 15-year civil war in 1990. The proposed law could reduce sentences or release convicted militants and drug dealers, with some exceptions. Families of soldiers and servicemen killed by Islamist militant groups have protested the amnesty, with some expressing a desire to see the perpetrators executed rather than receive reduced sentences.

Neither Hezbollah nor Lebanon's diverse religious institutions, some of which permit the death penalty within their own court systems, have issued immediate comments on the vote.