17 Former IS Members Sentenced To Death By Libyan Court

According to a statement from the nation’s chief prosecutor in Tripoli, a court in Libya has sentenced 17 former members of the Islamic State organization to death.

According to the announcement, individuals found guilty of taking part in the murder of 53 persons in the western city of Sabratha and the damage of public property received the death penalty.

16 other militants received prison sentences, including two life sentences. When the punishments would be executed was not made clear by the court.

After years of civil strife, Libya is still divided between two opposing governments. There is a great deal of lawlessness as a result of the conflict between the Tripoli capital’s government and that of eastern Libya.
Militia groups have also accumulated vast wealth and power from kidnappings and their control over the country’s lucrative human trafficking trade.

The extremist group expanded their reach in Libya after the 2011 uprising that toppled and later killed longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi. IS militants first seized Darna in 2014 and then later Sirte and areas surrounding the city of Sabratha.

However, unlike Syria and Iraq, IS was unable to profit from chaos and take large swathes of Libya. Instead, the group was limited to only administrative pockets dotted across the oil-rich North African country, unable to gain supremacy over Libya’s numerous well-armed militia forces tightly bound by tribal loyalties.

Several IS training camps were located outside Sabratha. In early 2016, some 700 of its fighters, most of who were Tunisian, were based in the area. In March 2016, affiliates of the group briefly took over the city’s security headquarters and beheaded 12 Libyan security officials before using the headless corpses to block nearby roads.

Sirte’s central Martyrs’ Square was transformed by IS into a stage for public extrajudicial killings — including beheadings by a sword — for a wide variety of offences.

In April 2016, near the height of its power, the Libyan branch of the militant group had recruited around 6,000 fighters, US military experts estimated.

IS was driven from its main stronghold, the coastal city of Sirte, in late 2016 and fled inland. However, the militants maintain a limited presence in small pockets of the country including the areas surrounding Sabratha.

In February 2016, the United States carried out an airstrike on an IS training camp near Sabratha, killing at least 40 people, as part of its effort to eradicate the Islamic State.