📰 What Happened
Lebanon’s parliament voted to abolish the death penalty, becoming the first Middle East country to do so. The 128-member assembly passed the law by majority vote, with Hezbollah’s bloc opposing, replacing death sentences with life imprisonment with aggravated hard labour.
🔍 The Backstory
Lebanon had maintained an unofficial moratorium on executions since January 2004, but courts kept issuing death sentences; about 85 people were under such sentences at the end of 2025. Abolition has been rare across the Middle East.
🎯 Why It Matters
The vote makes Lebanon a regional pioneer on capital punishment, creating new legal protection for the 85 people previously on death row and potentially influencing abolition debates across the Middle East.
Lebanon’s parliament voted to abolish the death penalty, becoming the first Middle East country to do so. The 128-member assembly passed the law by majority vote, with Hezbollah’s bloc opposing, replacing death sentences with life imprisonment with aggravated hard labour.
Lebanon had maintained an unofficial moratorium on executions since January 2004, but courts kept issuing death sentences; about 85 people were under such sentences at the end of 2025. Abolition has been rare across the Middle East.
The vote makes Lebanon a regional pioneer on capital punishment, creating new legal protection for the 85 people previously on death row and potentially influencing abolition debates across the Middle East.
📰 Source: Al Jazeera
aljazeera.com ↗
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