Sierra Leone has formally abolished the death penalty, after President Julius Maada Bio signed into law a new measure outlawing capital punishment that was agreed by MPs in July.
“As a nation, we have today exorcised horrors of a cruel past,” the president said in a statement quoted by AFP news agency.
“We today affirm our belief in the sanctity of life.”
Rights group Amnesty International said that last year 39 death sentences were handed down.
But no-one has been executed in Sierra Leone since 1998.
Death sentences have often been commuted, but by the end of last year 94 people were still on death row, Amnesty said.
Sierra Leone has now will become the 23rd African country to have abolished the death penalty, the New York Times reports
Source: BBC
