Antoinette was arrested in 1994 and sentenced to death in Lebanon in 1997 for the murder of a priest. In prison, Antoinette was tortured. She was finally released in 1999 following the pressure of international campaigns.

While no death sentences have been carried out in Lebanon since 2004, death sentences remain frequent. At least 82 people, including 1 woman, were on death row at the end of 2020, almost half of whom have been awaiting execution for over 15 years. This de facto moratorium has never been formalised. Lebanese prisons are the most overcrowded in the Middle East (236% occupancy rate in 2019). Roumieh prison, with a capacity of 1,050 inmates, has three times that number; Qobbeh prison, with a capacity of 250, holds 550. The Middle East and North Africa region is among the most resistant to the global abolitionist trend. Excluding China, only four countries were responsible for 88% of all executions worldwide in 2020: Iran, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. In Lebanon, which has been under a de facto moratorium for 17 years, the year 2020 brought positive signs: no death sentences were handed down by the Lebanese judiciary, and the government voted for the first time in favour of the UN Resolution calling for a universal moratorium on the use of the death penalty.

Antoinette's story is the story of political repression expressed through the death penalty in Lebanon as in other countries. This woman suffered more than 5 years of injustice and torture on death row, condemned for a crime her brother was accused of by the state. The physical and moral torture she endured was clearly aimed at forcing her to testify against her brother, a member of the Lebanese Forces, who was in exile at the time. Antoinette's conviction was itself based on two testimonies extorted under torture, the authors of which later retracted. Antoinette's innocence was finally recognised, far too late, by a justice system that oppresses the innocent. Antoinette Chahine has become a great abolitionist activist and has participated in six of the seven World Congresses against the death penalty. She encourages everyone to commit to the abolitionist struggle: "We must all work to achieve the day when the death penalty is abolished in Lebanon and throughout the world.”