Minister of Justice Adel Nassar described the abolition of the death penalty as an important forward step for Lebanon, and said that it is not about being lenient toward crime or criminals, noting that the death penalty has not been carried out in Lebanon for 20 years and that it hinders any possibility of recovering criminals who flee to countries that have abolished the death penalty.

The Lebanese Parliament’s Administration and Justice Committee held a session yesterday during which it approved a law abolishing the death penalty from Lebanon’s legal texts after about five sessions and extensive study.

“The death penalty is nothing but organized killing carried out by the state.” This is what Albert Camus wrote in a philosophical essay titled “Reflections on the Guillotine” in the 1950s in a French magazine, where he presented one of the most prominent philosophical texts opposing the death penalty in the world.

Although he was not the first historically to call for the abolition of this punishment, whose deterrent value he questioned, his text helped fuel the legal and ethical debate that later led to its abolition in several countries, until the number of countries that abolished it reached 151 out of 195 countries.

Representative image.

In Lebanon, enforcement of this penalty has been suspended since 2004. However, anyone sentenced to it has their execution halted and is instead imprisoned, a situation affecting more than 80 people currently held in prison.

In a development within the path toward abolishing the penalty, the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee had previously approved a draft law to abolish it, with certain amendments that the Lebanese Foundation for Civil Rights had submitted to Parliament last October.

The government had discussed these amendments and endorsed them in a four-page memorandum. The draft law was then referred to the Administration and Justice Committee, which studied it extensively before it was approved in a plenary session of Parliament.

The founder of the organization, Dr. Ogarit Younan, told Annahar that “what has taken place in terms of developments and progress in recent times is positive.”

According to Younan, “the conditions were favorable for abolishing the penalty, with the presence of a Prime Minister, a Minister of Justice, and a considerable number of MPs who are firmly opposed to the death penalty. Its abolition means Lebanon is reducing violence and improving its image abroad.”

Regarding the amendments introduced by the Human Rights Committee chaired by MP Michel Moussa, Younan said: “Details were amended related to making the penalty stricter for those who would have been executed, as well as involving the victims’ families in the judicial process.”

Abolishing the death penalty in any country represents a major legal and human rights transformation. Through this step, Lebanon confirms its commitment to adopting non-retributive punishments and the right to life.

It will also benefit Lebanon in cases involving cooperation with judicial authorities in countries that have abolished the death penalty, particularly regarding the extradition of suspects to Lebanese courts, as such countries do not extradite individuals suspected of crimes if they may face the death penalty.

A prominent example of this is the cooperation between the Lebanese judiciary and the Bulgarian judiciary in the port case, where Bulgaria did not extradite the ship owner of the “Niterra” vessel to Lebanon (for several reasons, most notably Lebanon’s retention of the death penalty). This forced the investigative judge Tarek Bitar to travel to Bulgaria to interrogate him there.

Shihab and Hrawi presidential mandates oversaw most executions

Death sentences were carried out in Lebanon across different periods, but at very different rates depending on the political and security situation and the convictions of the president whose signature was required on the execution decree.

Before the 1975 civil war, Lebanon witnessed sporadic executions during the terms of Presidents Fouad Chehab, Charles Helou, and Suleiman Frangieh. The period with the highest number of executions was the Shihab era, specifically in 1961, when 19 members of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party were executed after attempting a coup and trying to seize power by attacking the Ministry of Defense and the army.

After the suspension of executions during the civil war years, it was decided to adopt a stricter approach to these sentences after the war. During the presidency of Elias Hrawi, 14 executions were carried out between 1994 and 1998. Several other sentences were implemented in later presidencies, most notably under Emile Lahoud and Michel Suleiman, with the last execution taking place on January 17, 2004.

The judiciary can make mistakes: the Tabarja case

The death penalty in Lebanon is stipulated in 43 legal articles, under which judges issue rulings that impose this irreversible punishment, which cannot be corrected if the judiciary makes an error in judgment.

In 1998, a death sentence was issued against two individuals in a murder case in Tabarja. The sentence was carried out publicly in Tabarja square, where the two convicted individuals were hanged in the town’s main square, only for it to later be revealed that one of them was innocent.

By what means has the death penalty been carried out in Lebanon?

A total of 51 people were executed in Lebanon (all of them men, as it was customary not to execute women sentenced to death) as follows: 35 by hanging, which were civilian sentences, and 16 by firing squad, which were military sentences.