(Bloomberg) -- Sierra Leone has become the latest country to abolish capital punishment.
“We should not, we shall not and we will never again execute any persons in this sovereign republic,” President Julius Maada Bio said in a statement Friday after signing into law a bill that bans the death penalty.
The West African nation is the twenty-third country on the continent to abolish the practice, according to Amnesty International. Sierra Leone’s death sentences nearly doubled to 39 in 2020, compared with the previous year, but no executions were actually carried out, according to the London-based advocacy group’s latest report. The Sierra Leonean parliament had voted in favor of the bill in July.
