The Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said forces loyal to Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar executed at least 31 people following grossly unfair military trials, with at least 50 others facing imminent execution.

In a statement on Wednesday, the rights organisation said the executions were carried out by the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) controlling eastern and southern Libya.

It said the executions were the first known in Libya since 2010, adding that at least 50 people held at Gernada military prison remained at risk of execution.

“The Libyan Arab Armed Forces are putting people to death after secret trials built on confessions allegedly extracted through torture, in courts that Libya’s own Supreme Court has said should not be trying civilians,” said Bassam Khawaja, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

“Every execution carried out under these conditions is an irreversible injustice and every government with influence over the LAAF should be pressing hard to stop the next one.”

According to the statement, many of those executed have been arrested in Derna and Benghazi during or after the armed conflict between the LAAF and opposing armed groups from 2014 to 2018.

It said military courts in eastern Libya convicted hundreds of civilians in secret trials between 2018 and 2021, sentencing at least 22 to death.

The HRW said many of the sentences were based on confessions allegedly extracted under torture by the Internal Security Agency, an armed group affiliated with the LAAF.

“At least two death sentences were reduced to life in prison on appeal by a higher military court in 2019, yet the defendants were put to death this year regardless,” it said.

It added that the executions took place despite a November 2025 ruling by the constitutional chamber of Libya’s Supreme Court that Law No. 4/2017 was unconstitutional insofar as it granted military courts jurisdiction to try civilians for terrorism and crimes against the state.

“Libya went more than 15 years without an execution, and the LAAF has shattered that moratorium in a matter of weeks,” Mr Khawaja said. 

“The lives of at least 50 more people now depend on whether Haftar’s forces, and the governments that back them, choose to stop this.”