Lebanon's parliament on Tuesday abolished the death penalty, making it the first country in the Arab world to replace the sentencing with life imprisonment with aggravated hard labour.
The tiny Mediterranean country has committed to an unofficial moratorium on executions since January 2004. However, dozens of death sentences since then have been issued, but later suspended or commuted.
A majority of Lebanon's 128-member parliament voted in favour of ending the death penalty, except for the parliamentary bloc of Hezbollah.
Justice Minister Adel Nassar, who was in Parliament, called it a “historic step” for the country.
Rights groups that have called for formalising the moratorium or ending the death penalty altogether have also celebrated the vote.
It's unclear how aggravated hard labour would be enforced, as some legislators said the terms of the new punishment are not yet clear.
Lebanon does have the punishment of hard labour written into law and court decisions. Still, even those have been rarely enforced in recent years due to Lebanon's cash-strapped state and the lack of resources and capacity in its overcrowded prisons.
