MADRID 1 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Zimbabwe announced this Wednesday the end of the death penalty in the country almost two decades after the southern African nation carried out its last execution.
The law, approved by President Emmerson Mnangagwa after the nation’s cabinet agreed to abolish capital punishment in June, has been definitively put on hold in recent hours through a government decree.
“No court shall impose the death penalty on a person for any crime, regardless of the time in which it is committed, but shall impose any other competent sentence that is appropriate in the circumstances of the case,” as stated in the decree published in the Official Gazette of the Government of the country.
President Mnangagwa, who was sentenced to death by former Prime Minister Ian Smith’s government during Zimbabwe’s war for independence, has until now been a staunch opponent of capital punishment.
Zimbabwe currently has 65 prisoners under sentence of death. The last execution took place in 2005.