BEIRUT: Lebanon abolished the death penalty on Tuesday after parliament approved legislation replacing capital punishment with life imprisonment, more than two decades after the country effectively stopped carrying out executions.
Justice Minister Adel Nassar described the move as “historic,” adding it formally ended Lebanon’s use of capital punishment without weakening penalties for serious crimes.
“This step moves Lebanon from being a state that sentences people to death to one that has replaced the death penalty with life imprisonment,” Nassar told Arab News.
“Abolishing the death penalty does not mean Lebanon is becoming lenient toward perpetrators of crimes,” he said, adding that the country was taking a leading position in the Middle East by formally ending capital punishment.
Lebanon has not carried out an execution since 2004.
The Lebanese Association for Civil Rights, which prepared the draft legislation, estimates that 84 prisoners currently held in Lebanese jails are under sentence of death.
Nassar said abolition could also help Lebanon secure the extradition of suspects from countries that had previously refused to hand them over because they risked execution.
He said: “Countries that used to refuse to extradite suspects to Lebanon on the grounds that Lebanon applies the death penalty will no longer be able to use that argument.”
Parliament approved the law after amendments were introduced to a draft proposed by MP Abdul Rahman Al-Bizri.
Under the new legislation, death sentences which would have been imposed previously will be replaced with aggravated life imprisonment.
For crimes committed before the law’s implementation, death sentences will be commuted to life imprisonment with hard labor.
Hezbollah MPs abstained from the vote, while a parliamentary majority backed the bill.
Michel Moussa, chairman of parliament’s Human Rights Committee, told Arab News the move was “a major achievement and a landmark in the development and modernization of Lebanese legislation.”
He added: “Lebanon has joined the ranks of countries that have abolished this punishment, particularly as executions have already been suspended since 2004.”
Three parliamentary committees approved the draft legislation in July, paving the way for Tuesday’s vote.
Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the decision brought an end to a long period in which the death penalty remained on the statute books despite the absence of executions.
He said: “Despite the unofficial moratorium on the use of the death penalty over the past two decades, Lebanon needed to take an additional step and make a decisive break with this cruel practice by removing the death penalty from all provisions of Lebanese law.”
Lebanon has since 2020 also voted in favor of a UN General Assembly resolution calling on states to establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing capital punishment.
The new law will amend Article 37 of the Penal Code and repeal Article 43, as well as Articles 420-424 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which govern the implementation of death sentences.
Capital punishment has been part of Lebanese criminal law since the Penal Code was introduced in 1943, drawing heavily on earlier French legislation.
Its application became more severe after the end of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.
Legislation passed in 1994 restricted judges’ ability to apply mitigating circumstances in murder cases, making the death penalty mandatory for certain offenses regardless of the circumstances surrounding the crime.
A 2001 law later repealed those provisions and restored previous Penal Code articles, but stopped short of abolishing capital punishment altogether.
Debate over the death penalty has repeatedly surfaced in Lebanon over the past three decades.
In 2000, then–Prime Minister Salim Al-Hoss refused to approve the executions of a Lebanese national and a Syrian national convicted of murder and rape.
The execution decrees had already been signed by then-President Emile Lahoud and Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Michel Murr, triggering a constitutional and political dispute.
Al-Hoss said at the time that he opposed capital punishment “in principle, because God, who gave us life, is the one who takes it back.”
Tuesday’s vote now formally closes that chapter, replacing a 22-year de facto moratorium with full abolition under Lebanese law.
