Explainer
Who benefits from Lebanon’s amnesty law and why it is controversial
The law, initially intended to ease prison overcrowding, could see the release of Islamists accused of killing soldiers and allow Lebanese exiled to Israel return to the country.
BEIRUT — Lebanon passed the highly controversial general amnesty law on Wednesday, the first of its kind since the end of the civil war in 1991.
A majority of the 128-member parliament voted in favor of the bill, while all 13 lawmakers from the Shiite Hezbollah group and 12 from the parliamentary bloc of the Christian Free Patriotic Movement walked out of the session. They were joined by former FPM lawmakers Ibrahim Kanaan and Simon Abi Ramia.
Thousands of prisoners could be released or have their sentences reduced under the new legislation.
Imad Hout from the Sunni Islamist al-Jamaa al-Islamyia group, one of the lawmakers who endorsed the bill, said on Wednesday that some 79 Islamist detainees will be released from prison under the new law.
