BEIRUT, June 6 -- Samira Bou Saab did not come to parliament to argue the law. She came because her son is buried under the sand, as she put it, and the man who killed him may yet walk free to see his own children grow up. The draft amnesty law moving through Lebanon's legislature would commute death sentences, reduce life terms, and eventually release thousands of convicted militants, drug traffickers, and fighters - the broadest prisoner release the country has attempted since the civil war amnesty of 1991.

What no one in the legislature appears able to explain to Bou Saab is why justice, in Lebanon, always seems to arrive for everyone except the families who lost someone to it.

Lawmakers have pressed ahead with the amnesty despite th...