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Libya
Criminal Justice System
The Libyan system of criminal justice has been heavily influenced
by Islamic law, particularly since Qadhafi's proclamation of the
Popular Revolution on April 15, 1973. On that date, the Libyan
leader announced that all existing laws formulated by the monarchy
were to be replaced by the sharia, the sacred law of Islam. Some
amendments to bring the criminal code into conformity with Islam
had been made before this proclamation. In October 1972, the government
enacted a law providing for the amputation of the right hands
of convicted thieves. (As a modern note to this traditional Islamic
punishment, the government gave assurances that amputation would
be performed at a hospital under sanitary conditions with an anesthetic.)
In practice, this penalty has not been commonly imposed.
Qadhafi's proclamation involved a reorientation of Libya's entire
criminal code, because, according to the 1954 code, no act was
a crime unless defined as such by law. Yet the code also specified
that nothing in the criminal code affected the individual rights
provided for in Islamic sharia. The two provisions were basically
incompatible because the 1954 code identified crimes in decreasing
order of seriousness as felonies, misdemeanors, and contraventions,
assigning maximum sentences to each, whereas under the sharia
an act could be--depending upon the circumstances-- mandatory,
commendable, permissible, reprehensible, or forbidden.
Efforts to align the criminal code's three categories of offense
with the five classifications embodied in the sharia involved
Libyan legal and religious scholars in an extensive and slow-moving
process to minimize the obvious contradictions in the two systems.
Changes in the code's provisions were announced from time to time,
but the basic philosophical issues had not been completely resolved
by 1973.
Amendments to the criminal code after 1973 addressed both moral
issues related to Islamic beliefs and purely secular matters,
notably those concerning state security. In official legal announcements
in 1973 and 1974, lashings and imprisonment of adulterers, imprisonment
of homosexuals for up to five years, and floggings for those transgressing
the fast of Ramadan were issued as laws "in line with positive
Islamic legislation." Another law provided forty lashes for any
Muslim who drank or served alcoholic beverages. For alcoholic-related
offenses, non-Muslims could receive fines or imprisonment, and
fines and jail terms were set for possession of or trafficking
in liquor.
In August 1975, following a major coup attempt, the criminal
code was further revised to strengthen state security. Such actions
as "scheming" with foreigners to harm Libya's military or political
position, facilitating war against the state, revealing state
or defense secrets, infiltration into military reservations, and
possession of means of espionage were made subject to harsh penalties,
including life imprisonment and hanging. Punishments for public
servants were stiffer than for ordinary citizens.
An increasing number of acts have brought the threat of execution.
A 1975 law provided that membership in a political party opposing
the principles of the 1969 Revolution could result in death. In
1977 economic crimes, such as damaging oil installations or stock
piles of basic commodities, were added. Qadhafi's repeated calls
for abolition of the death sentence have not been translated into
legislative action.
The Libyan criminal justice system under the Qadhafi-led government
has been characterized by many repressive features. Victims reported
torture and beatings during interrogation as a matter of practice,
and long jail sentences for political nonconformity. Other irregularities
included bypassing the regular court system by special tribunals
and holding show trials. The international human rights organization,
Amnesty International, has repeatedly reported evidence of grave
violations of civil rights and of Libyan law. Most of Amnesty
International's inquiries and appeals to Libya to free political
prisoners, to abandon torture to extract confessions, and to commute
death penalties have gone unanswered.
An account by Amnesty International in 1977 cited twenty-six
executions (the first death penalties that had been carried out
in twenty-three years), large numbers of Libyans who had been
held in detention for up to four years without court action, trials
that were "anything but fair and impartial," and defendants who
were deprived of their basic legal rights under Libyan law. When
it was pointed out to Libyan authorities that they were failing
to conform to UN agreements Libya had ratified--the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights--the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs
replied that there were currently no political prisoners in Libyan
prisons and that all means of defense and safeguards of justice
were provided for accused persons. In 1978 Amnesty International
asserted that the people's court system violated the UN agreements
because the courts were composed largely of government representatives
rather than members of an impartial judiciary. Moreover, all trials
in people's courts were held in secret and no appeals were permitted.
A further report by Amnesty International described a new series
of breaches of judicial norms between 1982 and 1984. It cited
the trial in 1982 of twenty-five individuals on charges of membership
in an illegal organization (the Baath--Arab Socialist Resurrection--Party).
The accused were acquitted because their confessions were obtained
through torture. In violation of Libyan law, they were retried
in 1983 before a revolutionary court headed by a captain in the
special security branch and received severe sentences, including
death penalties in three cases. In 1984, eight people were hanged
publicly following decisions of Basic People's Congresses in their
localities that they were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an
international Islamic movement banned by Qadhafi as an illegal
political party. In the same year, two students were hanged before
thousands of their fellow students at Al Fatah University in Tripoli.
No explanation was given of the charges or of the judicial proceedings,
although the students were possibly tried before the student revolutionary
committee. Amnesty International has been unsuccessful in gaining
its representatives admission to trials and has not received replies
to most of its inquiries and appeals.
The penal system was a responsibility of the Secretariat of Interior
and was administered by a department of the police administration.
Three institutions--the Central Prison at Tripoli, Kuwayfiyah
Prison at Benghazi, and Jdeida Prison outside Tripoli-- were known
to exist, and smaller facilities in less populated centers were
assumed to be part of the system. Qadhafi granted permission for
visits by Amnesty International to several prisons in the late
1970s, but the necessary arrangements were never made by Libyan
authorities. Subsequent efforts to inspect living conditions of
political prisoners have been unsuccessful.
According to a report submitted by Libya to the UN, the prison
system was reorganized under Law No. 47 in 1975. According to
the report, the thrust of this law was to change the prisons from
institutions of "punishment and terror" to ones where inmates
were afforded education and training as part of a program to rehabilitate
offenders. According to the report, the law envisaged a series
of increasingly less restrictive penal facilities in which inmates
could earn moves upward through a hierarchy of prisons by good
behavior and an appropriate attitude. As of 1987 the extent to
which these objectives had been realized had not been made public.
Data as of 1987
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