Gadhafi’s Son Sentenced to Death for Libya War Crimes

Libyan news media said eight other senior Gadhafi government officials who are believed to be in the custody of the court had also been sentenced to death by firing squad.

The Criminal Court in the capital, Tripoli, also sentenced to death Gaddafi’s prime minister Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi and former intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi. The country is split between two governments and their militia allies, with the internationally recognized administration based in Tobruk in the east, and a rival Islamist government centered in Tripoli.

Al-Islam’s sentence was handed down in absentia as he is now being held in the south-western town of Zintan by a militia opposed to the Tripoli authorities.

File video from 2011 of Moammar Gadhafi’s son and one-time heir apparent Seif al-Islam taken shortly after his capture shows him warning his captors that Libya’s regions that united in revolution will turn against each other shortly.

Earlier, some reports suggested that Saif al-Islam had appeared briefly in court but they remain unconfirmed.

Part of those concerns have to do with Libya’s current civil war, which began in 2014.

Eight former officials received life sentences and seven jail terms of 12 years each and four of the 37 defendants were acquitted, Sadiq said.

“But as people called for the fall of his father’s rule – he stood by him till the bitter end”, she added. One of those sentenced to death is Abuzed Omar-Dorda, who was instrumental in brokering the arrangement that led the UK and USA eventually to agree to a non-jury trial in the Netherlands.

It must be noted here that Muammar Gaddafi, the deposed dictator of Libya, was killed in 2011 by rebel forces attempting to free the country from military dictatorship.

October 28, 2011 – Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the worldwide Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, confirms that the ICC is having “informal conversations” about the surrender of Saif al-Islam Gadhafi.

More than 30 close associates of Colonel Gaddafi were tried for preventing peaceful demonstrations during the uprising.

The trial, which opened in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, in April last year, has been slammed by global rights groups due to flaws in the trial process.

Blair had helped Saif with his philosophy PhD thesis during his controversial student days at the London School of Economics – an institution, which had accepted hundreds of thousands in “donations” from Saif’s charitable foundation and the Gaddafi clan.