Zimbabwe’s president once faced the death penalty and is now set to abolish it

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe’s Senate has approved a bill to abolish the death penalty, a key step in scrapping a law last used in the southern African nation nearly 20 years ago.

Zimbabwe’s Parliament said Thursday that the bill was passed by senators the night before. The death penalty will be abolished if it is signed by the president, which is likely.

The southern African country uses hanging, and last executed someone in 2005, partly because at one point no one was willing to take up the job of state executioner, or hangman.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe’s leader since 2017, has publicly spoken of his opposition to capital punishment. He has cited his own experience of being sentenced to death - which was later changed to 10 years in prison - for blowing up a train during the country’s war of independence in the 1960s. He has used presidential amnesties to commute death sentences to life in prison.

Amnesty International, which campaigns against the death penalty, urged Mnangagwa to sign the bill into law “without delay” and commute death sentences. Zimbabwe has more than 60 prisoners currently on death row.

According to Amnesty, about three-quarters of countries in the world no longer carry out the death penalty. Zimbabwe is one of more than a dozen in Africa and more than 50 across the world that have the death penalty enshrined in law without any official moratorium on it.

Amnesty International said it recorded 1,153 known executions globally in 2023, up from 883 the previous year, although countries that carried out executions declined from 20 to 16. Due to a veil of secrecy, the figures do not include those from North Korea, Vietnam and China.

China is the “world’s lead executioner” where thousands of people are believed to have been executed, Amnesty said in a report released in October.

Iran and Saudi Arabia accounted for almost 90% of all executions recorded by Amnesty in 2023. The United States recorded an increase from 18 executions in 2022 to 24 in 2023. Last year, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and the U.S. recorded the most executions, in that order.

Zimbabwe is among four African countries alongside Kenya, Liberia and Ghana that have recently taken “positive steps” towards abolishing the death penalty, Amnesty said.

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AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa