Libya's Eastern Forces Execute 31 in First Wave Since 2010, HRW Reports

Libya has carried out at least 31 executions since late August 2026—the first known capital punishments in the country in more than fifteen years. The Libyan Arab Armed Forces, the military organization led by General Khalifa Haftar that controls eastern and southern Libya, announced the first batch of ten executions by firing squad on August 23, following what Human Rights Watch describes as grossly unfair military trials. By September 10, documentation by international human rights groups had confirmed at least 31 people dead, with at least 50 more prisoners held at Gernada military prison facing imminent execution.

Many of those executed had been arrested in Derna and Benghazi during or immediately after the armed conflict between the LAAF and opposing armed groups that lasted from 2014 to 2018. Between 2018 and 2021, military courts in eastern Libya convicted hundreds of civilians in closed proceedings, sentencing at least 22 to death. According to Amnesty International, many of these convictions rested on confessions that human rights organizations say were extracted through torture by the Internal Security Agency, an armed group affiliated with the LAAF. The timing of the recent executions is particularly striking: at least two people whose death sentences had been reduced to life imprisonment on appeal by a higher military court in 2019 were put to death this year anyway.

The executions proceeded despite a constitutional obstacle that should have stopped them. In November 2025, the constitutional chamber of Libya's Supreme Court ruled that Law No. 4/2017 is unconstitutional to the extent that it allows military courts to try civilians for terrorism and crimes against the state. The LAAF disregarded this ruling and carried out the executions regardless. Bassam Khawaja, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, characterized the trials as built on a foundation of torture and secrecy: "The Libyan Arab Armed Forces are putting people to death after secret trials built on confessions allegedly extracted through torture, in courts that Libya's own Supreme Court has said should not be trying civilians."

The trials themselves violated fundamental due process protections at every stage. They were held in secret and without advance notice to defendants or their families. Journalists, human rights organizations, and the families of the accused were barred from attending. Several defendants were prevented from choosing their own lawyers, and those who had retained counsel were denied visits before and during trial and could not speak with their attorneys in private. Defendants apparently were not permitted to present their cases in court or to examine the evidence against them. When verdicts were announced, the defendants and their lawyers received no written or reasoned judgments explaining the convictions.

The aftermath extended the violations beyond the courtroom. Families were not told in advance that executions would take place. After the killings, authorities refused to return the bodies to relatives, asked family members to identify the dead, then buried them without the families present and warned relatives against holding funerals. Human Rights Watch notes that these practices—secret executions and the denial of a final visit—violate international law by inflicting severe mental suffering on both the executed and their relatives, constituting torture and ill-treatment under international standards.

Libya remains fractured between two competing authorities. The Tripoli-based Government of National Unity, which holds international recognition, controls the western part of the country alongside affiliated security agencies and armed groups. The LAAF and its allied forces control the east and south. Both operate with what Human Rights Watch describes as near-total impunity. The United Nations and the GNU condemned the executions, but enforcement has proven difficult. The organization emphasized that governments funding, training, and legitimizing the LAAF possess real leverage and bear responsibility to use it—both publicly and privately—to compel LAAF leaders to halt all executions.

The broader context reveals a justice system in collapse. Libya's justice sector is fragmented and deeply polarized. Unaccountable militias control prisons that exist only nominally under state ministries. Human Rights Watch has previously documented outdated and repressive legislation, the absence of fair trial protections, and widespread due process violations across both the east and west. The organization called on Libyan authorities in both regions to restrict military courts to military offenses committed by military personnel and to cease trying civilians in military courts altogether. It also urged a prompt review of all cases involving civilians wrongfully detained and prosecuted before military courts, with remedies including release, transfer to civilian courts, or retrial in accordance with international fair trial standards.

The immediate crisis is the fifty or more prisoners at Gernada military prison awaiting execution. Khawaja framed the stakes plainly: "Libya went more than 15 years without an execution, and the LAAF has shattered that moratorium in a matter of weeks. The lives of at least 50 more people now depend on whether Haftar's forces, and the governments that back them, choose to stop this." The question now is whether international pressure on the LAAF's foreign supporters will prove sufficient to prevent the next wave of killings.