Burkina Faso’s Council of Ministers has adopted a bill to restore the death penalty, targeting offences such as treason, terrorism and espionage, authorities said.

“The adoption of this bill is part of reforms ... to have a justice that responds to the deep aspirations of our people,” Minister of Justice Edasso Rodrigue Bayala said in a Facebook post late Thursday.

The death penalty was abolished in the country in 2018.

The bill has to be adopted by parliament and reviewed by the courts before becoming law.

Marceau Sivieude, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa, called the move a “serious setback for human rights in Burkina Faso,” and alarming “in the context of the ongoing crackdown on political opponents, human rights activists and journalists in Burkina Faso.”

Since taking power in a 2022 coup, the West African country’s military leaders have launched sweeping reforms, including postponing elections that were expected to restore civilian rule and dissolving the country’s independent electoral commission.

Burkina Faso has increasingly silenced critical media outlets in recent years. It suspended the BBC and Voice of America radio stations for their coverage of a mass killing of civilians carried out by the country’s armed forces, as well as arrested three prominent journalists earlier this year.

The country is one of several West African nations where the military has taken over in recent years, capitalising on widespread discontent with previous democratically elected governments over security issues. The military government has been accused of human rights abuses and the detention of journalists critical of the government.

The landlocked nation of 23 million people is among the countries struggling with a security crisis in the arid Sahel region south of the Sahara in recent years. It has been shaken by violence from extremist groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.