3 August 2007
Ndola — PRESIDENT Mwanawasa has pardoned 823 prisoners across the country serving sentences for various crimes and signed warrants of commutation of death sentences to life imprisonment in respect of 97 prisoners.
In a statement issued in Lusaka yesterday by his special assistant for legal affairs, Darlington Mwape, President Mwanawasa stressed that the order of release and warrants of commutation were with immediate effect.
President Mwanawasa said Government would continue to review cases with the view of recommending them for Presidential pardon as one way of dealing with the congestion in detention facilities.
For some time now, Mr Mwanawasa had been concerned about the state of the prisons and the conditions of detention facilities.
He stressed that Government was actively considering ways of making conditions of detention in these facilities humane and bearable.
President Mwanawasa believed in the words of Nelson Mandela that "One cannot judge a nation by how it treats its most illustrious citizens but by the treatment it metes out to its most marginalised prisoners."
It was in that regard that he signed warrants of commutation of death sentences to life imprisonment for 97 prisoners who were hitherto on death row. The commutation was without prejudice to the right of the prisoners to appeal for further clemency.
On the 823 prisoners, Mr Mwanawasa said they were being released on condition that they did no commit similar offences during the period up to the respective dates when they would have completed serving sentences.
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