BEIRUT, Aug. 12 -- For twenty-two years, eighty-five people waited in Lebanon's prisons with death sentences over their heads and no execution date in sight. The Lebanese state had stopped carrying out executions in January 2004, a quiet decision by successive governments that produced a moratorium without a legal foundation. On Monday, parliament gave that moratorium a foundation.

Lebanon voted to abolish the death penalty for all crimes, replacing capital punishment with life imprisonment with hard labor. The decision makes Lebanon the first Arab country and the first state in the Middle East to formally eliminate the sentence. Globally, it becomes the 114th country to have done so.

The vote closes a legislative chapter that began in ...