Islamic opposition in Libya

Abstract

On 17 February 1987, Libyan television startled its viewers with a special programme-the public executions of nine persons. The persons concerned were identified as members of two Islamic fundamentalist groups: Jihad (Struggle) and Hizbullah (Party of God). According to the charges made against them, they had carried out two assassinations, and had attempted to assassinate Soviet military personnel in Libya. They had also carried out acts of treason and had been involved in the planning of bombing and sabotage campaigns. Six of the accused were civilians and were executed by hanging in Benghazi before an audience of hundreds who chanted slogans as the executions were carried out. The remaining three were soldiers and were executed by firing-squad within their barracks. According to Libyan opposition sources in Cairo, the six civilians concerned were members of a small fundamentalist group calling itself Jihad which had few contacts outside Libya. The group had been uncovered by the Libyan authorities in Benghazi four months earlier. 1 This was not the first time that the public execution of Islamicists had occurred in Libya. In 1984 two students whom the authorities claimed had been members of fundamentalist groupings (known as the Islamic Liberation Front and the Islamic Vanguard, according to Western press sources) were executed by hanging on the campus of Tripoli's Al-Fateh University, apparently after long periods of imprisonment.2 There have been rumours of other, similar executions in earlier years. Indeed, the Qaddafi regime has long considered fundamentalists to be a threat to its revolution, with members of fundamentalist organisations-the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan) and the Islamic Liberation Party (Hizb' al-Tahrir al-Islami), figuring among the four hundred persons arrested in the wake of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi's important Zuwara (cultural revolution) speech in April 1973.3 As these facts make clear, there is opposition to the Qaddafi regime in Libya based on Islamic precept, and this opposition is perceived by the regime to represent a threat. It also has a long pedigree and appears to be