DHAKA: Saif al-Islam, the most prominent son of Libya’s slain leader, Muammar Gaddafi, has been sentenced to death by firing squad.

He was sentenced in absentia on Tuesday in Tripoli along with eight other senior members of the former regime, overthrown in 2011, reports Al Jazeera.

They were accused of war crimes and suppressing peaceful protests during the revolution, a state prosecutor said in early June.

The trial had started in April 2014 before fighting between rival factions resulted in a power struggle with two governments competing for authority - one based in the capital, Tripoli, and the other one in Tobruk in the east.

Saif al-Islam has been held since 2011 by a former rebel group in Zintan that opposes the Tripoli government.

Abdullah Senussi, the former intelligence chief, was among the former regime officials sentenced, as well as former prime minister Baghdadi Ali Mahmudi.

Salah al-Bakkoush, a Tripoli-based political analyst, said he did not expect the rulings to have strong resonance in Libya.

‘Libyans in general have so many problems right now that many were not even following the trial,’ he told Al Jazeera.

‘Those who participated in the struggle against the regime of Gaddafi will be following and will be happy.’

The International Criminal Court and other human rights organisations worry about the fairness of Libya’s justice system although the North African country won the right in 2013 to try Gaddafi’s former spy chief at home instead of at the ICC in The Hague.

BDST: 1545 HRS, JULY 28, 2015
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