Libya Court Sentences To Death 24 People And 14 Others To Life In ISIS

ISIS illustration. (Wikimedia Commons/thierry ehrmann)

JAKARTA - The Libyan court sentenced 23 people to death and 14 others to life imprisonment for their role in the deadly Islamic State militant campaign.

The campaign included the deletion of the head of a group of Egyptian Christians and the seizure of the City of Sirte in 2015.

Libya's Attorney General's Office said in a statement that one other person was sentenced to 12 years in prison, six to 10 years, one to five years and six to three years, while five people were released and three others died before the case was tried.

The ISIS branch in Libya is one of the strongest militant groups outside its home territory in Iraq and Syria, which took advantage of the chaos and war that occurred, following a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.

In 2015, the group launched an attack on the luxury Hotel Corinthiansia in Tripoli, killing nine people, before kidnapping and parrying dozens of Egyptian Christians whose deaths were featured in horrific propaganda films.

After gaining territory in Benghazi, Derna and Ajdabiya in eastern Libya, the group captured the central coastal city of Sirte, mastering it until the end of 2016 when they imposed a harsh regime of public morality with brutal punishment.

Mustafa Salem Trabulsi, head of an organization for the bereaved family of people killed or missing by the group, said he hoped all suspects would face the death penalty, but he accepted the outcome.

"My son is missing and my relative, my brother-in-law, was murdered at Sirte Square," he said.

Separately, speaking in court on Monday, Fawzia Arhuma said he welcomed the death penalty after his son was killed by the group at a power plant near Sirte.

"Today my son raised my head. Today I buried my child," he said.