Courting Chaos in Libya By Atlantic Council

Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, son of late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, attends a hearing behind bars in a courtroom in Zintan, Libya, May 25, 2014. He was sentenced to death by a court in Tripoli July 28. (Reuters)

The decision by a Tripoli court to sentence a son of late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi to death by firing squad is the latest in a series of “self-defeating maneuvers” by authorities in Libya’s capital, says the Atlantic Council’s Karim Mezran.


Tripoli’s Court of Assize convicted thirty-two defendants July 28. Gadhafi’s son and onetime heir apparent, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, was convicted of murder and inciting genocide during Libya’s civil war in 2011. Eight others, including Libya’s former spy chief Abdullah al-Senussi, and two former Prime Ministers—Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi and Abuzeid Dorda—were also sentenced to death. Twenty-three others were sentenced to prison terms ranging from five years to life imprisonment.

“This was a mock trial,” said Mezran, a Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

“These are worrisome signals of a further unraveling of Fajr Libya’s control of territory in the west. It leaves the international community in a harder position,” he added.

Another signal of this lack of cohesion is the refusal by the Tripoli-based General National Congress (GNC), backed by the Fajr Libya militia, to sign a United Nations-brokered peace treaty with the authorities in Tobruk that has caused rifts to emerge between some militias in Tripoli and some of their allies in the western city of Misrata, he added.

Libya has been plunged into chaos since the ouster and death of its longtime dictator, Moammar Gadhafi, in the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011. Oil-rich Libya today has two power centers—one in the capital Tripoli and the other in the eastern city of Tobruk. Only the government in Tobruk is internationally recognized.

“Whether or not one recognizes the relevance of the government in Tripoli, it is important to note that it is de facto showing signs of increasing fragmentation,” said Mezran.

The sentences handed down July 28 can be appealed before the Libyan Supreme Court. Libyan law, however, limits the court’s authority. The court’s earlier ruling that the government in Tobruk is illegal—a ruling ignored by the international community and believed to have been delivered under pressure from militias that control Tripoli has also delegitimized the court.

It is very unlikely that the death sentence on Gadhafi, who is in the custody of militias in the western city of Zintan that do not recognize the authority of the administration in Tripoli, will ever be carried out.