Death sentences are given in Mali for serious crimes...

Death sentences are given in Mali for serious crimes such as assassinations, betrayals, sedition, spying, arsons and destruction with explosives of public buildings, plots against the state and embezzlement of public funds whose amount is equal to or more than 10 million CFA francs.
Only two out of 68 prisoners sentenced to death in Mali have faced the gallows in the past 20 years. The two prisoners, sentenced to death for murder, armed robbery and other offences, were executed in 1980.
On December 10 1997, on the occasion of the World Day for Human Rights, President Alpha Oumar Konarè stated his opposition to the death penalty. All death sentences have been commuted to life imprisonment.