Libya court sentences 23 to death for ISIL campaign

Appeals court sentences 14 others to life in prison for campaign including beheading Egyptian Christians in 2015.

A Libyan court has sentenced 23 people to death and another 14 to life in prison for their role in a deadly ISIL (ISIS) campaign that included beheading a group of Egyptian Christians and seizing the city of Sirte in 2015.

The Attorney General’s office said in a statement on Monday that one other person was sentenced to 12 years in prison, six to 10 years, one to five years and six to three years while five were acquitted and three others died before their case came to trial.

Libya was said to be one of ISIL’s strongholds outside Iraq and Syria, and it took advantage of the chaos and warfare in the North African country that followed a 2011 NATO-backed uprising.

In 2015, the armed group launched an attack on the luxury Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli, killing nine people, before abducting and beheading dozens of Egyptian Christians whose deaths it featured in grisly propaganda films.

After gaining territory in Benghazi, Derna and Ajdabiya in eastern Libya, the group seized the central coastal city of Sirte, holding it until late 2016 as it enforced a harsh regime of public morality backed up by brutal punishments.

Mustafa Salem Trabulsi, head of an organisation for bereaved families of people killed or disappeared by the group, said he had hoped that all the suspects would face the death penalty, but he accepted the outcome.

“My son is missing and my brother-in-law was murdered in Sirte Square,” he said.

Speaking in court on Monday, Fawzia Arhuma said she welcomed the death sentences after her son was killed by the group at a power station near Sirte.

“Today my son raised my head. Today I buried my son,” she said.

ISIL and other groups exploited the chaos that engulfed Libya after the 2011 uprising that toppled and later killed longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi.

The group was eventually expelled from Sirte in December 2016 by forces fighting for the former United Nations-backed Government of National Accord. Forces of east-based commander Khalifa Haftar reclaimed Derna two years later.

Hundreds of alleged former ISIL fighters remain incarcerated in Libyan prisons, many of whom are awaiting trial.