Zimbabwe has officially abolished the death penalty after President Emmerson Mnangagwa signed into law a bill on Tuesday which will commute sentences of around 60 prisoners on death row to jail time, reports Euronews.

The last execution was carried out almost two-decades ago in 2005, partly because at one point no one was willing to take up the job of state executioner.

President Mnangagwa faced the death penalty himself in the 1960s during Zimbabwe’s war of independence.

The Zimbabwean leader has publicly expressed his opposition to capital punishment since 2017. He’s cited his own experience of being sentenced to death, a punishment which was later changed to a 10-year prison sentence, for blowing up a train during his country’s liberation war from white minority rule.

He’s also used his presidential powers a number of times to commute death sentences of various inmates to life in prison.