Human Rights Watch: Eastern Libya Executes at Least 31 After Secret Military Trials

Human Rights Watch said Thursday that eastern Libyan authorities aligned with military commander Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces have executed at least 31 people since late August, in what the group said were Libya’s first known executions since 2010, with at least 50 more prisoners now at imminent risk.

In a report published Oct. 14, Human Rights Watch said many of the executions followed secret military trials of civilians that rights groups described as grossly unfair. The group said convictions were tied in some cases to confessions allegedly extracted under torture and that the proceedings continued despite a November 2025 ruling by Libya’s Supreme Court constitutional chamber that military courts cannot try civilians for terrorism and state-security offenses under Law No. 4 of 2017.

The chronology outlined by rights groups begins on Aug. 23, when the LAAF military prosecutor announced that 10 people had been executed by firing squad after convictions on murder and terrorism-related charges. Human Rights Watch, citing Amnesty International and local monitors including Libya Crimes Watch, said the total had risen to at least 31 by Sept. 10.

“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,” Bassam Khawaja of Human Rights Watch said.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty said many of those executed had been arrested in Derna and Benghazi during or after fighting between the LAAF and opposing armed groups from 2014 to 2018. The groups said families and journalists were barred from the trials, some defendants were denied lawyers of their choice, defense lawyers were prevented from meeting clients in private, and defendants appeared unable to challenge the evidence against them. Human Rights Watch said verdicts were issued without written, reasoned judgments.

Amnesty said many convictions relied on confessions allegedly obtained under torture by the Internal Security Agency, an armed group affiliated with the LAAF. Human Rights Watch also said at least two prisoners whose death sentences were reduced to life imprisonment on appeal in 2019 were executed this year anyway.

Rights groups said the handling of the executions extended the abuses beyond the courtroom. Families were not notified in advance, they said, authorities refused to hand over the bodies, buried the dead without relatives present and warned families not to hold funerals.

The legal dispute is central in Libya, where rival authorities run competing institutions. The internationally recognized Government of National Unity, based in Tripoli, controls western Libya, while Haftar’s LAAF controls the east and much of the south. That divide has produced parallel and highly politicized justice systems, including military courts whose authority over civilians was narrowed by the Supreme Court last year.

The United Nations Support Mission in Libya and the Tripoli-based government both condemned the executions. UNSMIL said it “expresses grave concern that more than 30 individuals have been executed in eastern Libya in recent weeks, and calls on the authorities to immediately suspend further executions.”

Human Rights Watch, citing Amnesty and local monitors, said at least 50 more people held in Gernada military prison face imminent risk of execution.

There is no publicly available official list of all those executed, and access to prison and court records in eastern Libya is limited. As a result, the identities of the dead and details of their cases rely largely on monitoring by rights groups rather than full official disclosures.