2010: 18 in Libya
May 30th, 2011 Headsman
Last year on this date, Libya — having just days prior been controversially elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council* — celebrated by conducting 18 firing squad executions.
State media reported that 14 were shot in Tripoli, and four more in Benghazi, in unspecified cases that Amnesty International “fear[ed] … fail to satisfy international standards for fair trial.”
Among them were nationals of Nigeria, Chad, and Egypt who, particularly in the first case, might have been condemned at a tribunal entirely conducted in a language they could not understand.
Qaddafi’s Libya has always been opaque about its practice of capital punishment; if it met the international outcry for more information about these 18, this site is not aware of it.
But as with Libya’s neighbor in the so-called Arab Spring, it’s one small reminder that what goes around occasionally (maybe) comes around too.
* In view of the current unpleasantness, Tripoli has recently been suspended from the body.
Also on this date
- 1868: Joseph Brown, for arson, murder, and money
- 1416: Jerome of Prague, the first Hussite martyr
- 1916: Robert Digby in Villeret
- 2000: Fu Xinrong, involuntary organ donor
- 1431: Joan of Arc
Entry Filed under: 21st Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,Execution,History,Known But To God,Libya,Mass Executions,Murder,Racial and Ethnic Minorities,Ripped from the Headlines,Shot
Tags: 2010, 2010s, benghazi, muammar gaddafi, muammar qaddafi, tripoli
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