Lebanese Justice Minister Bahij Tabbara said that a...

Lebanese Justice Minister Bahij Tabbara said that a proposal submitted by seven deputies to replace capital punishment with life imprisonment with hard labor would mean the creation of a completely new category of punishment in Lebanese law. Tabbara said that if such a sentence were to be introduced, judges would be deprived of their right to take mitigating circumstances into consideration since their only option for certain crimes would be an irreducible life sentence. He also said that the President would be deprived of his right to grant pardons.