General amnesty: Parliament adopts explosive text

The Lebanese Parliament finally adopted, on Wednesday, 12 August 2026, the law of general amnesty and exceptional reduction of certain sentences, after several months of negotiations and two parliamentary days marked by an open crisis between Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, Defence Minister Michel Menassa, the army and several political blocs. The vote, by show of hands, did not close the controversy. On the contrary, he moved it: the text was now voted, but it was after the withdrawal of the deputies from the Resistance Loyalty bloc and the strong Lebanon bloc, who refused to participate in the decision without the Minister of Defence being able to present to the assembly the observations of the army.

Adoption is a concrete turning point for the detainees concerned. MP Imad al-Hout announced after the vote that79 out of 146 qualified islamist detaineesshould be able to leave prisons under the new provisions. The text also reduces the threshold for long detention without trial from 14 to 12 years in prison, organizes the continuation of proceedings after release and amends several mechanisms for reducing sentences. But behind these provisions presented by their defenders as a correction of judicial injustices is the question that almost blew up the sitting: how far can an amnesty go when it affects cases of terrorism, clashes with the army and convictions related to the death of military personnel?

Law passed after Hezbollah and CPL withdrew

The meeting had resumed at 11 a.m. with a clear objective: to conclude consideration of a text that the House had been unable to adopt in previous attempts. At 11:20 a.m., Members officially began consideration of the proposal to grant a general amnesty and to reduce certain sentences exceptionally. Less than twenty minutes later, the institutional crisis of the day before reappeared. Michel Menassa is present in Parliament, but he does not enter the Chamber to present the position of the army. The deputies of the strong Lebanon bloc and those of the Resistance Loyalty then left the meeting.

Their withdrawal took place before the text was voted on and immediately gave its adoption a particular political dimension. The two blocs do not necessarily challenge the principle of amnesty. Their objection concerns how Parliament is led to decide when the military institution has been calling for certain categories of crimes to be clearly excluded for several months. The Minister of Defence wanted to put these reservations before Members of Parliament. The conflict with Nawaf Salam on this point had already dominated the meeting on 11 August and caused a first quorum crisis.

Salim Aoun justifies the withdrawal of the Free Patriotic Movement by considering that the members of his bloc do not want to endorse by their presence what they consider an institutional anomaly. He recalled that the Prime Minister was in charge of speaking on behalf of the government, but believed that Michel Menassa did not want to present a competing government policy: he wished to set out the views of the army and the Ministry of Defence on a text directly linked to several military issues.

Ibrahim Moussaoui, for the bloc of Loyalty to the Resistance, develops a nearby position. He considers that a minister cannot be prevented from giving his opinion before Parliament. This convergence between Hezbollah and CPL does not mean that the two formations defend exactly the same interests in the amnesty issue, but they find themselves on the idea that the vote should not take place without hearing the minister.

Nevertheless, the Chamber continues its work. The quorum was maintained and Nabih Berri advanced consideration of the eight articles. After several discussions and amendments, the text was finally adopted by show of hands.

The compromise of the twelve years at the heart of the text

The most important provision concerns persons who have been detained for a very long time without a judgement being handed down against them. The compromise finally adopted reduces from 14 to12 years in prisonthe threshold opening the possibility of release in certain situations. The detainee concerned can then continue to be tried while at the same time being free, which distinguishes the mechanism of a genuine annulment of the proceedings.

This distinction is fundamental. Part of the public debate presented the law as allowing for the general release of convicted persons. The text adopted is in fact based on several different mechanisms. For those detained for a very long time without trial, the stated objective is to put an end to situations where pretrial detention has reached a period which the proponents consider incompatible with normal justice. Release does not necessarily mean abandoning prosecution.

The wording of the provision has precisely provoked negotiations until the last hours. An earlier version had raised serious concerns about the notion of « final judgment » or « irrevocable ». Some texts made it clear that a person convicted by a court but whose judgement had not yet become final could still benefit from the scheme. This assumption considerably expanded the circle of potential beneficiaries.

The compromise adopted on Wednesday adopts a more restrictive wording: the measure concerning the twelve years must apply to persons against whomno judgement has been renderedand not just those who have not yet a final judgment. The purpose of this amendment is to prevent convicted persons from using an appeal or cassation procedure to fall into the category of long detention without trial.

The issue is not technical. In particular, it determined whether certain persons prosecuted or convicted in heavy security cases could automatically benefit from the provision.

79 out of 146 islamist detainees should be released

At the end of the session, Imad al-Hout gives the most concrete figure of the day:79 out of 146 islamist detainees should be able to leave prisonsfollowing the adoption of the law. The Member described this measure as the correction of a situation in which people had spent years in detention without a final decision by the courts.

The case of « Islamic detainees » has been one of the most sensitive subjects of Lebanese policy for more than a decade. The expression itself covers very different profiles: defendants who have never been definitively tried, persons prosecuted for belonging to armed groups, convicted for security offences, participants in clashes and individuals accused or convicted of acts leading to the death of soldiers.

It is precisely this diversity that has for years prevented any agreement. Sunni officials in favour of amnesty stress the excessive nature of certain detentions and the slow pace of military justice. They believe that an entire community has come to regard some of these issues as the result of unbalanced justice, especially after the clashes in the north of the country and the security operations of the 2000s and 2010s.

Bilal Abdallah thus presented the adoption of the law as the closure of a period during which, according to him, a Lebanese component felt affected by the previous political regime, certain security apparatus and military justice. However, this reading is far from consensual.

For the opponents of too wide an amnesty, grouping under the label of « Islamic detainees » people whose judicial records are radically different may, on the contrary, erase the distinction between procedural injustice and criminal responsibility.

Those who have soldiers’ blood on their hands

This is the most controversial part of the text. The Lebanese Armed Forces has repeatedly called for those involved in crimes against its soldiers or the security forces not to benefit from mechanisms leading to early release.

MP Assaad Dergham sums up this red line on Wednesday: anything that could benefit a person whose hands are « stained with the blood of the Lebanese army » is unacceptable. This position is shared beyond the PLC alone. The families of soldiers killed in clashes with jihadist groups have been following the discussions with concern for several months.

The heaviest memories include Nahr el-Bared in 2007 and Abra in 2013. In Nahr al-Bared, the army had fought for several months the Fatah al-Islam group in the Palestinian camp in northern Lebanon at the cost of heavy military casualties. In Abra, near Saida, clashes between the army and the supporters of Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir had also resulted in the death of soldiers.

Not all detainees related to these files are in the same situation and not all will be released under the new law. It is precisely to avoid this generalization that the text distinguishes different categories. But the fear of opponents remains that a general reduction in sentences or a rule of duration will ultimately result in indirect consequences for some serious convictions.

The name of Ahmad al-Assir has thus returned throughout the parliamentary process. His situation has crystallized concerns because he was convicted in several cases relating to the Abra clashes. The law does not in itself mean his automatic release. Its possible benefit depends on the provisions applicable to each of its convictions, their nature and the exclusions provided for. But his case served as a political test throughout the negotiations: for many MPs, an amnesty repairing long detentions should not become a way out for those responsible for deadly attacks against the army.

The abolition of the death penalty has complicated the calculation

The vote on the amnesty comes the day after another major reform: the abolition of the death penalty by Parliament. Both texts had been politically linked during the negotiations, as the disappearance of the death penalty automatically changed the fate of those sentenced to death who could subsequently benefit from reductions in the sentence.

The compromise drawn up in the Commissions previously envisaged reducing certain death sentences to28 years of detentionand certain life sentences17 years. The abolition of the death penalty, voted on 11 August, changed this architecture and fuelled the opposition of Hezbollah. In particular, the Resistance Faith bloc considered that some convicted persons risked successively benefiting from the replacement of the death penalty and a reduction provided for in the amnesty.

Hezbollah deputies cited the risk that individuals involved in attacks on the southern suburbs of Beirut might benefit from this combination. For them, it was necessary to avoid a humanist reform of the death penalty being transformed, in combination with the amnesty, into a particularly strong reduction for persons convicted of terrorism.

This controversy explains why the order of review of the two laws had itself become a political issue in previous sessions. The debate was therefore not only about the principle of abolishing the death penalty or granting an amnesty: the legal link between the two texts could change the actual length of detention of certain convicted persons.

A vote preceded by a crisis between Salam and Menassa

Wednesday’s adoption cannot be separated from the institutional confrontation which preceded it. On Tuesday, August 11, Michel Menassa wanted to present the military’s observations to the Chamber. Nawaf Salam felt that, as President of the Council, it was up to him to express the government’s position.

Salam had invoked article 64 of the Constitution, which entrusts the President of the Council with the representation of the Government and the right to speak on his behalf. Several Members, including Gebran Bassil, had replied invoking Rule 67, which allows ministers to attend parliamentary sittings and provides that they must be heard when they request the floor.

The dispute quickly emerged from the legal framework. According to several accounts of the session, Salam was concerned that a public intervention by the army on Islamist detainees would place the military institution in a confrontation with part of the Sunni community. Its opponents found this reasoning unacceptable, believing that the army could not be reduced to a community actor when it expressed reservations about cases involving killed soldiers.

The conflict had led to the departure of Menassa and the departure of several deputies. Tuesday’s meeting ended without a final vote on the amnesty, forcing Nabih Berri to resume work on Wednesday.

The problem is not solved the next day. Menassa arrives in Parliament, but does not present his speech before the assembly. The MPs of the CPL and the Fidelity to the Resistance then leave the room.

Berri invokes contact with the army commander

However, Nabih Berri tries to defuse the dispute. The Speaker of the Chamber announced that he had contacted the Army Commander and said that the atmosphere was good. He also stated that an agreement existed to implement what had been agreed in previous discussions.

This speech does not convince the Members who called for Michel Menassa’s direct hearing. Their objection was not only related to the content of military reserves, but also to the institutional principle that the Minister of Defence should be able to expose them himself to Parliament.

Elias Bou Saab, vice-president of the Chamber and one of the main builders of the compromise on amnesty, defends after the vote the work done. He stressed the need to respect the military institution and recalled that the dead soldiers belonged to all communities. He also criticises the idea that a minister can be prevented from speaking in front of MPs.

But at the same time Bou Saab defends the adoption of the law. According to him, the compromise was politically built to « turn a page », while it is up to the government and the judiciary to redress the injustices and to correct the malfunctions that have produced excessively long detentions.

This position summarizes all the ambiguity of the vote: several officials who contest the way in which the army file has been dealt with nevertheless consider that the amnesty responds to a real problem.

A law passed « by politics »

The formula used by Elias Bou Saab is particularly revealing: the agreement on amnesty was found « by politics ». After years of failure, Parliament did not simply identify a common criminal doctrine. He built a compromise between claims brought by different forces and communities.

The dossier of Islamist detainees was the main request of several Sunni officials. Other components of the project involved drug-related offences, which were particularly sensitive in some areas of the Bekaa. Previous discussions had also addressed the plight of Lebanese who left for Israel during the Israeli withdrawal from the South in May 2000 and that of various categories of convicted persons.

This architecture has provided the necessary support, but it also feeds the criticism that Lebanon is once again dealing with its judicial problems through a general political compromise rather than through justice reform. The situations concerned sometimes have little in common: long pre-trial detention, ordinary crimes, drug-related offences, security cases or cooperation with Israel do not meet the same criminal logic.

The amnesty brings together these questions because they each have sufficient political weight to prevent the adoption of the text if they are totally rejected.

 » Amnesty must not replace justice »

After his withdrawal from the sitting, MP Simon Abi Ramia made one of the most directly related criticisms: he refused to allow the general amnesty to become a substitute for justice. The problem is central. An amnesty law can correct certain consequences of excessively lengthy proceedings, but it can also suppress or reduce the effects of a judicial decision without responding to the causes that have produced the initial malfunction.

The figure of the 79 Islamist detainees who are to be released from prison illustrates this double reading. For their defenders, it is evidence that the system left dozens of people locked up for an abnormal period of time. Their release corrects an injustice. For opponents, the mere fact that a political law is needed to deal with these situations proves above all the failure of the judicial system and poses the risk of a solution that is too general.

Amnesty does not reform the speed of proceedings, the capacity of courts or the rules of military justice. Imad al-Hout also insists on this point by saying that it will no longer be necessary to accept that a person remains imprisoned beyond the legal period of pre-trial detention.

The issue will therefore move quickly towards the implementation of this promise. If the same delays are repeated in a few years, a new amnesty could not be seen as a lasting institutional response.

The case of victims and personal rights

The law does not remove all the civil consequences of the crimes concerned. The question ofpersonal rights of victimswas part of the changes discussed before adoption. A criminal amnesty may extinguish or reduce certain consequences of public action without necessarily removing the individual rights of injured persons to seek redress.

This distinction is particularly important in cases involving death or injury. For a family that has lost a relative, the release or reduction of sentence of a convicted person may be seen as a denial of the judgement obtained. The maintenance of civil rights or redress mechanisms does not remove this perception, but prevents the amnesty from automatically erasing all the legal consequences of the act.

The problem becomes even more sensitive when the victims are military. The army then represents both a state institution and a group of families who have lost sons, fathers or brothers. This is what Bou Saab points out by recalling that the « martyrs » of the army belong to all communities.

The controversy over Michel Menassa is not a mere protocol dispute. It concerns the question of who had the legitimacy to carry this brief at the time when Parliament decided to reduce or amend certain penalties.

Rumieh’s cries after the vote

The result of the vote is immediately visible in prisons. Shortly after the announcement of the adoption, shouts and « takbir » were reported in Roumieh, where a significant part of the detainees concerned by the text were present.

This reaction summarizes the accumulated expectation around amnesty. For years, families have been calling for an end to cases characterized by endless procedures. The announcement that 79 out of 146 Islamist detainees should be released now gives reform a much more concrete face than legal debates over twelve or fourteen years.

But exits do not necessarily mean that all court files disappear. For the beneficiaries of the provision relating to long detention without trial, proceedings may continue while they are at liberty. The immediate effect will therefore be the end of the detention, not necessarily the acquittal.

Implementation will now require individual review of files to determine exactly which inmates meet the requirements of the Act. The figure announced by Imad al-Hout is a political estimate of Islamist beneficiaries, but the judicial application still needs to identify the persons actually concerned.

A victory for Amnesty defenders, an intact fracture

For those who have been defending the text for several years, the vote is a victory. Nawaf Salam had again declared Wednesday morning hope that the amnesty would be adopted during the day. Samir Geagea had reaffirmed his support for the project a few hours earlier, despite the many obstacles encountered.

For others, voting leaves an institutional problem open. Ghazi Zeaiter thus believes that the law is unbalanced and without justice, while denouncing the way in which the Minister of Defence has been treated. The CPL contests the chosen procedure and Hezbollah refused to participate in the vote, even though its deputies then returned to the Chamber when the House moved on to other cases.

This sequence is significant. Loyalty to the Resistance does not boycott the entire parliamentary session. Its elected representatives return when consideration of another draft begins, confirming that their withdrawal specifically refers to the conditions under which amnesty was adopted.

The law now has formal parliamentary legitimacy, but it is born after a politically incomplete vote. Two important blocks chose not to participate in the decision, not because they were simply absent, but to mark an explicit opposition to the procedure.

After the vote, the test of application

On Wednesday, Parliament succeeded in what it had failed to do in previous attempts: to turn several years of negotiations into adopted texts. This does not mean that the issues that fueled the controversy are resolved. They will now move to courts, prisons and individual cases.

It will be necessary to determine precisely who benefits from the twelve years, what reductions apply to which convictions, how victims’ rights are safeguarded and how the law is linked with the abolition of the death penalty passed the previous day. Above all, it will be necessary to verify that excluded categories are applied unambiguously in cases where military or security personnel have been killed.

The debate on the army will not disappear further. Parliament passed the law without hearing Michel Menassa under the conditions demanded by the CPL and Fidelity to the Resistance. This decision creates a political precedent that these formations intend to continue to challenge, regardless of the content of the amnesty.

The other question is deeper. By allowing the release of detainees who have remained for up to 12 years behind bars without trial, Parliament effectively acknowledges the existence of a major dysfunction of the Lebanese judiciary. Amnesty can end some of these detentions. She does not yet say how to prevent them from happening again.

The vote on 12 August will probably remain as a two-sided decision. For dozens of families, it means the immediate prospect of a return home. For the families of killed soldiers and for the deputies who wanted to hear the army before any decision, he leaves a question on the limits of leniency. Between the two, Lebanon had just again chosen the path of political compromise to resolve a problem that its judicial system had failed to resolve.