government: operates under a transitional government

state of civil and political rights: Not free

constitution: the Transitional National Council, recognized by the UN in September 2011 as the legitimate interim government, operates under a temporary constitution

legal system: NA

legislative system: the UN in September 2011 recognized the Libyan Transitional National Council (TNC) as the legitimate governing authority for Libya until an interim government is in place; the TNC on 22 November 2011 established a new transitional government

judicial system: NA

religion: Sunni Muslim 97%, other 3%

death row:

year of last executions: 0-0-0

death sentences: 1

executions: 0

situation:
Under the penal code in force at the time of Gaddafi, dating back to 1953, there were 21 crimes punishable by death, including non-violent activities such as those relating to freedom of expression and association and other political offences and economic “crimes”.
Information concerning death sentences and executions were rarely reported.
In February 2011, an armed conflict started in Libya, following a series of peaceful protests that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s security services attempted to repress. After eight months of civil war and NATO air strikes, the armed conflict in Libya between forces loyal to Gaddafi and those seeking to oust his Government ended on 20 October 2011 with the capture and the murder of Gaddafi fleeing Sirte, his hometown.
Several videos related to his death were broadcast by news channels and circulated via the internet. The first shows footage of Gaddafi alive, his face and shirt bloodied, stumbling and being dragged toward an ambulance by armed men chanting “God is great” in Arabic. The second shows Gaddafi, stripped to the waist, suffering from an apparent gunshot wound to the head, and in a pool of blood, together with jubilant fighters firing automatic weapons in the air. A third video, posted on YouTube, shows fighters “hovering around his lifeless-looking body, posing for photographs and yanking his limp head up and down by the hair.”
On 23 October 2011, during his speech to the nation in Benghazi to formally declare the country’s liberation from the ousted regime, Libya’s transitional leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil said that Sharia law would become the “main source” of legislation in the post- Gaddafi era. “Any law that runs contrary to the Islamic principles of the Islamic Sharia is legally void,” Mustafa Abdul Jalil said. Jalil, however, sought to reassure the international community by stating that Libyans were moderate Muslims and that the new Libya would not adopt any extremist ideology. He did not advocate cutting off the hands of thieves or stoning adulterers.
The country's central government appeared to be powerless in the face of a hodgepodge of tribal and city militias as well as Islamist factions that have come to the fore since the 2011 toppling of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
In March 2014, an Islamic extremist group, the Islamic Youth Shura Council, was established in the eastern city of Derna. The Islamic Youth declared the city as an Islamic Emirate and formed an alternative legal committee to the Libyan Government's legal institutions, intending to settle differences between people and arrange reconciliations on the basis of Sharia. The state has failed to assert its control of Derna since the end of Libya’s 2011 conflict. There has been no police or army presence since then, while the Derna Court of Appeals has been suspended since June 2013 following the assassination of a senior judge, amid repeated threats to judges by armed groups which effectively control the city enforcing their own interpretation of Islamic law.
On 19 August 2014, an Egyptian man was publicly executed in a football stadium in the town of Derna by militants of the Shura Council of Islamic Youth. An amateur video published on social media sites shows the public execution occurred at the hands of armed militants waving the black banner. Militants of the Islamic Youth posted the video of the Egyptian victim, Mohamed Ahmed Mohamed, being brought blindfolded into the football ground in a pick-up truck. Masked men armed with rifles then force him to kneel on a stretcher. A statement read out prior to the execution accused him of stabbing to death a Libyan man, Khalid al-Dirsi. It was stated that he admitted to murder and theft during interrogation by the Legitimate Committee for Dispute Resolution, a body apparently operating under the authority of the Shura Council of Islamic Youth. The Committee ruled he was to be “executed” unless pardoned by the family of the victim. It appeared from the video that the family refused to grant pardon. An unmasked man wearing plain clothes, believed to be the brother of Khalid al-Dirsi, was shown on the video shooting Mohamed Ahmed Mohamed in the head amid applauses from the audience.
On 9 November 2010, when the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya had been reviewed under the Universal Periodic Review of the UN Human Rights Council, the Libyan delegation indicated that the death penalty was applied in aggravating crimes and that since 1990 the death penalty had been applied in “only” 201 cases. The last known executions in Libya took place on 30 May 2010, when eighteen people, including nationals of Nigeria, Chad and Egypt,were executed for premeditated murder.
No information was available about judicial executions in Libya after the country’s liberation from the ousted regime in 2011.
Since the end of the 2011 conflict, and as of 4 October 2013, military and civil criminal courts in Misrata, Zawiyah, Benghazi, and Tripoli have issued 28 death sentences, 12 of them in absentia, according to Human Rights Watch. These include cases related to the 2011 conflict, as well as common criminal cases – mostly for murder.
In 2013, military and civil criminal courts in Misrata, Zawiyah, Benghazi, and Tripoli have issued at least 20 death sentences.
Between January and August 2013, the Zawiyah Criminal Court issued four death sentences in three separate cases, all involving murder, reported Human Rights Watch.
On 18 December 2014, Libya voted against the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly, as in the previous years.