Parliament's Administration and Justice Committee approved...

Parliament's Administration and Justice Committee approved a draft law aimed at scrapping the death penalty for deliberate homicide.
Legal sources expressed relief at the measure, which is an important step toward improving the country's human rights situation. The sources said that scrapping the controversial law gives courts added freedom to issue sentences according to both their humanitarian and judicial principles.Meanwhile, some lawyers said that they would not rest until the death penalty was scrapped for all homicide cases, whether premeditated or not.
In 1994, Parliament issued a law calling for the death sentence to be applied to the perpetuator of a deliberate homicide. Courts were banned from allowing leniency towards the accused, regardless of the circumstances that prompted the crime. However, since the law was passed, no death sentence has been implemented for deliberate homicide cases.When the draft law is passed by the full House, it will spare the lives of three criminals on death row.
The National Campaign to Abolish the Death Penalty provided Akkar MP Mikhael Daher, chairman of the Committee, with the results of a poll among MP's on capital punishment. Asked whether they favored scrapping the death penalty, 81 out of 90 MPs polled, or 90 percent, answered yes.