On this date in 1997, Libya announced the executions of six military officers and two civilians as “agent-spies who sold their honor, dignity and homeland to their enemies and supplied agents of foreign governments with information relating to the country’s defense secrets.” They had been convicted just the day before.

The unnamed banned organization to which they were accused of passing state secrets was the exiled National Front for the Salvation of Libya, an opposition group which, after the fall of Muammar Qaddafi, reconstituted itself as the National Front Party and presently holds seats in the Libyan Congress.

At the time of the executions, the National Front claimed that their real offense was a failed 1993 revolt.

• Col. Miftah Qarrum al-Wirfalli
• Major Ramadhan al-’Ayhuri
• Major Khalil Salam Mohammad al-Jidiq
• Col. Mostafa Abu al-Qassim Mas’ud al-Kikli
• Lt-Col. Sa’ad Saleh Farag
• Major Mostafa Ihbayl al-Firjani
• Dr Sa’ad Misbah al-‘Amin al-Zubaydi
• Sulayman Ghayth Miftah

On this day..

• 2016: Nimr al-Nimr, Shiite cleric
• 1959: Joaquin Casillas Lumpuy, Batista regime soldier
• 1588: Two Nuremberg highwaymen
• 1823: Robert Hartley, on Penenden Heath
• 1863: William Ockold, the last hanged at Worcester
• 1477: Gerolamo Olgiati, ducal assassin
• 1946: Franz Strasser
• 10 executions that defined the 1990s
• 1916: Sergeant John Robins, before evacuating Gallipoli
• 1981: Cipriano, Eugenio, and Ventura García-Marín Thompson
• 1645: John Hotham the Younger
• Daily Double: John Hothams
• 1994: Mansour Kikhia?
• 1663: Illiam Dhone