Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera has pardoned 175 inmates as part of a traditional independence-day gesture to free some prisoners, Information Minister Gospel Kazako said late Thursday.
Kazako told journalists that the pardoned prisoners were mostly the aged, the sickly and those serving sentences for less severe crimes or have shown signs of reform.
“These are prisoners who are very old, others sickly such that they could possibly fail to finish their sentences and those that have demonstrated the spirit of being reformed,” Kazako said.
The pardon of prisoners, which normally takes place around independence day or Christmas day, is meant to decongest Malawi’s crowded prisons.
Latest figures show that the country had more than 14,400 prisoners crammed into its crowded prisons that had a carrying capacity of only 7,000.
Malawi gained independence from Britain on 6 July 1964.
JN/APA