Eastern Libya Executed 31 People, Rights Groups Say 50 More at Risk

Forces that control eastern Libya have executed at least 31 people since late August, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday, in the first known executions in the country since 2010.

The group said the men were put to death after secret military trials, and that at least 50 more prisoners held at Gernada military prison are at imminent risk of execution. The Libyan Arab Armed Forces, led by General Khalifa Haftar, controls eastern and southern Libya.

On August 23, the force's military prosecutor announced that 10 people had been executed by firing squad after convictions for murder and terrorism related offenses. Rights groups documented at least 31 executions by September 10.

Trials behind closed doors

Human Rights Watch said many convictions rested on confessions that defendants said were extracted under torture. Families and journalists were barred from the trials. Some defendants were denied lawyers of their choice, and verdicts came without written, reasoned judgments.

The executions went ahead even though Libya's Supreme Court ruled in November 2025 that military courts cannot try civilians for terrorism and state security offenses. Two of the men put to death had won appeals in 2019 that reduced their death sentences to life in prison. The legal basis for executing them anyway remains unclear, Amnesty International said.

Many of those executed were arrested in Derna and Benghazi during or after the fighting between 2014 and 2018. Between 2018 and 2021, military courts in the east convicted hundreds of civilians in secret trials and sentenced at least 22 to death.

The pressure campaign

On October 12, Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, Libya Crimes Watch and the World Organisation Against Torture wrote jointly to seven governments and the European Union, asking for urgent diplomatic pressure to stop further executions. Human Rights Watch called on the force to halt all executions and declare a moratorium on the death penalty.

What happens next

No government with influence over eastern Libya has announced a public intervention. The rights groups say the window is short: the 50 men at Gernada can be executed at any time, and each execution notice so far has come after the fact, not before.