\n<\/p>\n
TUNIS: Amnesty International urged Algeria\u2019s government on Tuesday to abandon plans to resume executions after it pledged to give the death penalty to those responsible for wildfires following deadly blazes last month.<\/p>\n
Algeria struggled to put out fires that swept through its northeast and killed 12 people last month, according to an official tally, while witnesses spoke of dozens of deaths.<\/p>\n The North African country has not carried out executions since 1993 but has handed down the death sentence in some instances, including terror-related cases, without carrying it out.<\/p>\n Last month President Abdelmadjid Tebboune ordered the justice minister to amend the penal code to impose the death penalty for people who start wildfires after the deadly blazes.<\/p>\n \u201cAlgeria\u2019s authorities must immediately abandon any plans to expand the scope of the death penalty or resume executions after more than three decades without carrying one out,\u201d Amnesty said in a statement.<\/p>\n It also called for the country to impose an official moratorium \u201cas a first step toward fully abolishing the death penalty.\u201d<\/p>\n Tebboune also said that people sentenced to death should be executed right after exhausting their right to appeal.<\/p>\n The government began looking at draft penal code amendments this month.<\/p>\n Tebboune said \u201cchild abductors and abusers\u201d would also be included in the expanded death penalty plans.<\/p>\n Forest fires occur regularly in northern Algeria during the summer, but climate change is amplifying their impact by causing increasingly frequent droughts and intense heat.<\/p>\n But Tebboune alleged that there was \u201csomething criminal\u201d about the recent blazes.<\/p>\n Amnesty also said \u201ccredible sources have since reported significantly higher casualties\u201d than the official tally in the latest wildfires, \u201cincluding over 70 deaths in a single municipality.\u201d<\/p>\n More than 30 people were killed in July 2023 when fires tore through thousands of hectares of forests and farmland in Algeria, as well as hundreds of homes.<\/p>\n In 2023, Algeria handed the death penalty to more than 50 people \u2014 some in absentia \u2014 over the lynching of a 38-year-old man who was falsely accused of starting deadly forest fires two years earlier.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n