President Teodoro Obiang signs a measure that had been in the drawer since the country promised to take it in 2014
The president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogohas signed this Monday the repeal of the death penalty, a step that the vice president and son of the president, Teodorín, has described as “historic” for the country.
The measure had been in the drawer since 2014, when the country entered the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) and promised to abolish the death penalty, as well as to put an end to torture and extrajudicial detention by “state organs.”
The new law 4/2022, within the Penal Code, which was announced two months before the local, legislative and presidential elections, will enter into force 90 days after its publication in the Official State Gazette.
Its Article 26 specifies that “In the application of penalties, the death penalty is totally abolished in the Republic of Equatorial Guinea”.
The National Parliament of Equatorial Guinea approved the first Penal Code last 17 of August, thus putting an end to the Spanish regulations of 1963 that had been used in the country, according to the newspaper ‘Real Equatorial Guinea’.
Portugal initially opposed the accession of Equatorial Guinea to the CPLP for don’t speak portuguese — the Government approved in 2010 the declaration of this language as the third official language of the country– and for being a “dictatorial regime” where the “death penalty and the violation of Human Rights” survived.