FREETOWN, Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone's president on Friday signed a bill abolishing the death penalty, declaring the West African country had "exorcised horrors of a cruel past" after a long campaign to end capital punishment.
President Julius Maada Bio signed the abolition bill during a ceremony in the capital Freetown after lawmakers approved the text in July.
"We today affirm our belief in the sanctity of life," he said.
Deputy minister of justice Umaru Napoleon Koroma told AFP that Sierra Leone's first recorded execution dated from 1798 -- around a decade after Britain founded the colony for freed slaves in 1787.
No execution has taken place in the country since 1998, however, and death sentences were often commuted.
Under the new law, execution will be replaced with life imprisonment or a minimum 30-year jail term for crimes such as murder or mutiny.
The European Union's diplomatic service said in a statement that Sierra Leone's move "enhances the respect for human dignity in the country and reflects the growing trend in Africa and around the world to confine capital punishment to the history books".
Sierra Leone's 1991 constitution allowed the use of the death penalty for aggravated robbery, murder, treason and mutiny.
The diamond-rich but poor former British colony was ravaged by a 1991-2002 civil war that claimed 120,000 lives.
But the authorities in the nation of 7.5 million people resisted the idea, and courts continued to condemn people to death.
"My position was a hard and firm no to the death penalty in all its forms," he said. "We are a civilised nation".
According to Amnesty International, 108 countries had completely scrapped the death penalty by the end of 2020, while 144 had abolished it either in law or in practice.
Both executions and death penalties also fell across sub-Saharan Africa last year, Amnesty said.
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