Algeria Extends Death Penalty to Forest Arsonists

Algerian lawmakers on Thursday approved changes to the country’s penal code that would allow the death penalty to be imposed on people convicted of deliberately setting forest fires.

The move follows a series of deadly wildfires that swept through parts of northern Algeria, prompting the government to take a tougher stance against arson.

The amendments also expand the use of capital punishment to cover child kidnappings involving torture, sexual assault or mutilation.

The changes come after the Algerian government said it would resume executions, despite a long-standing moratorium on carrying them out.

“The adoption of the death penalty for these acts is the appropriate legal response to curb these crimes,” Justice Minister Lotfi Boudjemaa told the parliament after the vote.

Algeria has not carried out an execution since 1993, although courts have continued to hand down death sentences in some cases, including those linked to terrorism. Those sentences have not been implemented because of the country’s moratorium on executions.

In August, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune instructed the justice minister to amend the penal code and expand the list of crimes that could attract the death penalty. He also said people sentenced to death would be executed after they had exhausted all available appeals.

Under the amendments approved on Thursday, anyone convicted of deliberately setting fire to “forests, woods or planted or unplanted fields” could face the death penalty.

The punishment could also apply to anyone who “kidnaps a child by any means, tortures them, sexually assaults them and/or mutilates them”.

Amnesty International urged Algeria last month to drop the proposed changes and maintain its moratorium on executions.

Forest fires are common in northern Algeria during the summer months. However, climate change is making the fires more severe, with longer periods of drought and rising temperatures increasing the risk and impact of wildfires.

Tebboune, however, suggested that the recent fires may have involved deliberate acts, saying there was “something criminal” about the summer blazes.

Official figures put the death toll from the fires at 12, although witnesses reported that dozens of people had died.