Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam sentenced to death for war crimes

Meanwhile, other defendants have received sentences ranging from five years to life imprisonment. Four defendants were acquitted and others got shorter jail terms.

The charges against the defendants were not spelled out for which the verdict had been based.

The sentence was handed down in absentia as the younger Gaddafi is being held by a rebel group who are opposed to the Tripoli authorities in the south-western town of Zintan, according to CNN. Internal armed conflict has split Libya into factional fiefdoms.

Al-Islam’s sole appearances before the court have been by video link. The Zintani rebels say that they would not execute him or hand him over to the court.

The son of former dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has been sentenced to death by a court in Libya.

“There are serious questions about whether judges and prosecutors can be truly independent where utter lawlessness prevails and certain groups are unashamedly shielded from justice”, Stork said in the statement. A holder of a dubious PhD degree from the London School of Economics, Gaddafi was locked in Zintan, a mountainous region in western Libya.

“Libyan victims demand justice for the grave crimes and human rights violations committed under the Gaddafi regime-not only during the 2011 uprising, but since the beginning of Gaddafi’s rule”, stated Karim Lahidji, FIDH President.

Al-Dam said he doesn’t understand how anyone can be “astonished” by the sentence. “The whole thing is illegitimate from start to finish…”

One expert on the 1988 atrocity, in which 270 people died, said the execution would remove one of the Libyans most prepared to work with the Scottish authorities. The ICC does not allow the death penalty.

The Islamist parliament in Tripoli refused to put its signature to a UN-sponsored accord between Libya’s warring factions to create a national unity government, which was signed in Morocco on 12 July.

Saif al-Islam Gadhafi was ordered to face a firing squad for his role in trying to quash the 2011 revolution that led to his father’s ouster.

Libya has slid into chaos since the overthrow and killing of Gaddafi, who ruled the country for four decades.

Saif-al Islam was sentenced to death for committing war crimes during the 2011 uprising. The Libyan government paid Maritania 200 million U.S. dollars, or 5 per cent of the West African country’s GDP, for the return of Gaddafi’s co-accused Abdullah al-Senussi, defying an ICC arrest warrant. Another, Saadi, was extradited to Libya from Niger in March 2014.

Other charges brought before the Tripoli court also included kidnapping, plunder, sabotage and embezzlement of public funds.