Dar es Salaam - Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete Wednesday released 2 342 prisoners in a gesture of clemency to mark the 42nd anniversary of the east African nation's birth, the home affairs minister said.
The beneficiaries of the presidential clemency include minor offenders with prison terms of less than three years, prisoners aged over 70, and pregnant and breast-feeding women, Minister John Chiligati said.
Also pardoned were those suffering from life-threatening diseases like tuberculosis and HIV and Aids, he added.
The pardon does not cover prisoners convicted of serious offences such as murder, carjacking, drug trafficking, robbery, rape, sodomy, sexual abuse of children, "and offences that caused children to drop out of school", he said.
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Tanzania was celebrating the 42nd anniversary of the merger that created it from the Zanizbar islands and the mainland, then known as Tanganyika.
This is Kikwete's first presidential pardon since he took over the leadership in December last year.
Earlier on Wednesday, Kikwete led thousands of Tanzanians at the Dar es Salaam National Stadium in ceremonies to mark the union's anniversary. He inspected a guard of honour mounted by armed forces and later viewed a parade.
However, residents in Zanzibar have begun to increasingly challenge the articles of the April 26, 1964 act of confederation.
Many members of the semi-autonomous isle's overwhelmingly Muslim population believe the current structure of the union favours residents of the much larger mainland.
Tanzania was founded when the then president of Tanganyika, Julius Nyerere, and the late Zanzibar president Abeid Amani Karume led the two countries into a union.
The union came three years after Tanganyika's independence from British colonial rule. Zanzibar had four months earlier overthrown the Arab sultanate that had ruled the Indian Ocean islands for several centuries. - Sapa-AFP
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