HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwe's Senate has approved a bill abolish the death penaltyan important step towards abolishing a law that was last used in the southern African country almost 20 years ago.
The Zimbabwean parliament said on Thursday that the bill had been passed by senators the previous evening. The death penalty will be abolished if signed by the President, which is likely.
The last time anyone was executed in the southern African country was in 2005, partly because at a certain point no one was willing to accept the job of a state executioner or executioner.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe's head of state since 2017, has publicly expressed his opposition to the death penalty. He has cited his own experience when he was sentenced to death – which was later changed to a 10-year sentence – for blowing up a train during the country's war of independence in the 1960s. He took advantage of presidential amnesties Convert death sentences to life imprisonment.
Amnesty International, which campaigns against the death penalty, called on Mnangagwa to sign the law “immediately” and commute death sentences. There are currently more than 60 prisoners on death row in Zimbabwe.
According to Amnesty, the death penalty is no longer carried out in around three quarters of the world's countries. Zimbabwe is one of more than a dozen in Africa and more than 50 around the world that have the death penalty enshrined in law without an official moratorium on it.
Amnesty International said it recorded 1,153 known executions worldwide in 2023, up from 883 the previous year, although the number of countries carrying out executions fell from 20 to 16. For confidentiality reasons, the figures do not include those from North Korea, Vietnam and China.
China is the “world's leading executioner,” where thousands of people are believed to have been executed, Amnesty said in a report published in October.
Iran and Saudi Arabia were responsible for almost 90% of all executions recorded by Amnesty in 2023. The United States saw an increase from 18 executions in 2022 to 24 in 2023. Last year, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and the United States recorded the most executions, in that order.
Zimbabwe is among four African countries that have recently taken “positive steps” toward abolishing the death penalty, along with Kenya, Liberia and Ghana, Amnesty said.
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