Lebanon’s judiciary has begun preparing to implement a new general amnesty law even as a challenge to the legislation remains before the Constitutional Council, setting the stage for a potentially complex legal process involving thousands of prisoners and detainees.

The Public Prosecutor at the Court of Cassation, Judge Ahmad Rami Al-Hajj, has established a central operations room in coordination with security agencies, while the country’s governorates have started compiling files on convicted prisoners and detainees.

But Al-Hajj’s statement that the law “does not set out detailed implementation mechanisms” has raised a broader legal question: how should the judiciary proceed when legislation leaves key aspects of its application open to interpretation?

Al-Hajj said the work underway was not intended to determine the legislature’s intent, but to establish a clear and uniform mechanism for applying the law. Some provisions, he said, contain terms and wording that require clarification before they can be applied to existing legislation.

The law also does not directly identify the specific legal articles covered by the amnesty or sentence reductions. Instead, it uses broad descriptions of offenses, prompting coordination with the Higher Judicial Council to ensure that courts and public prosecutors apply the law consistently and avoid conflicting interpretations.

Scope of amnesty at center of legal debate

According to Annahar newspaper, the distinction is significant because the judiciary can review case files, identify the competent authority and compare the facts and judgments in each case with the conditions established by Parliament.

But when the wording of a provision is ambiguous, interpretation becomes inseparable from implementation.

That does not give prosecutors or judges the power to create a new amnesty or extend the law to categories that Parliament did not include. The scope of the amnesty remains determined by the legislation enacted by Parliament.

At the same time, the interpretation of broad legal terms can affect the law’s practical reach, potentially making its application broader or narrower within the limits of the text.

Article 2 is particularly important because it contains a lengthy list of offenses excluded from the amnesty. These include offenses involving public funds, forgery, violations related to the Code of Money and Credit, environmental crimes and certain theft and drug offenses.

Article 1, meanwhile, establishes the general rule, granting amnesty for crimes committed before March 1, 2026.

That makes the precise legal classification of each offense critical. Depending on how a crime is classified, a case could fall under the general amnesty or one of the exclusions.

Article 5 presents another potentially difficult issue. It provides for the exceptional release of any detainee who has spent more than 12 years in custody for a crime committed before March 1, 2026, provided no verdict has yet been issued. The trial, however, would continue.

The provision’s reference to “all crimes” could require careful judicial consideration, particularly in relation to Article 2 and its list of offenses excluded from the amnesty.

Release under Article 5 would not constitute an amnesty for the alleged offense, nor would it terminate the proceedings. But determining precisely how the provision interacts with the exclusions in Article 2 will require a consistent legal approach.

Multiple convictions could mean shorter sentences

Article 10 raises a separate issue by exceptionally amending Article 205 of the Penal Code, which governs multiple offenses.

Under the amended provision, enforcement of the most severe sentence becomes the general rule, while the combination of sentences is allowed subject to a specified maximum.

That could have a direct impact on cases involving multiple convictions, potentially reducing the amount of time some prisoners would remain behind bars after their legal status is recalculated.

The scale of the task is substantial.

Al-Hajj said more than 1,300 convicted prisoners, more than 2,000 people who are both detainees and convicted prisoners, and more than 5,000 detainees would need to have their files reviewed and classified before authorities can determine who qualifies for relief under the law.

The process therefore involves far more than an administrative exercise of identifying names and releasing eligible prisoners.

Judiciary cannot assume Parliament’s role

The central challenge for the judiciary, according to the legal analysis surrounding the law, is to ensure that the same provision is not interpreted differently from one court or prosecution office to another.

The judiciary is responsible for applying and interpreting the law in individual cases. But if a genuine ambiguity cannot be resolved through established rules of judicial interpretation, resolving it by expanding the scope of the amnesty would raise a different constitutional and legal question.

A general amnesty is legislation enacted by Parliament. Courts can interpret and apply its provisions, but they cannot effectively assume the legislature’s role by extending the amnesty to categories that the law does not cover.

That distinction will be particularly important as authorities work through thousands of files with different charges, convictions, detention periods and procedural histories.

The central operations room established by the Public Prosecution will therefore face a test that goes beyond administrative coordination: whether it can establish a uniform application of the law without allowing the interpretation of broad provisions to indirectly expand or restrict the pool of people eligible for relief.

The boundary between implementing the law and effectively broadening or narrowing its scope is likely to become one of the most consequential legal questions as Lebanon moves from approving the amnesty legislation to putting it into practice.