(MENAFN- Arab Times) ALibyan court on Tuesday sentenced slain dictator Muammar Gaddafi's son Seif al-Islam and eight other defendants to death for crimes during the 2011 uprising. Former intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi and Gaddafi's last prime minister Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmudi were also among those sentenced to death. Seif al-Islam was not in court because he is held in the southwestern hill town of Zintan by militia opposed to the Tripoli authorities. The trial, which opened in the Libyan capital in April last year, has been dogged by criticism from human rights watchdogs and an unresolved dispute with the International Criminal Court in The Hague over jurisdiction in the case of the Gaddafi son. The 37 defendants were charged with crimes including murder and complicity in incitement to rape during the 2011 uprising that toppled the dictatorship. The militia holding Seif al-Islam is loyal to the internationally recognised government which fled to the remote east last August when a rival militia alliance seized the capital and set up its own administration. Seif al-Islam's sole appearances before the court have been by video link and there have been none since May last year. Most of the other defendants are held in the capital, but some are held in Libya's third city Misrata which is loyal to the Tripoli authorities. The UN Security Council referred the conflict in Libya to the ICC in February 2011 amid Gaddafi's repression of the popular uprising against his decades-old regime at the height of the Arab Spring. Seif al-Islam is wanted by the Hague-based court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. ICC prosecutors say that as part of his father's "inner circle", he "conceived and orchestrated a plan to deter and quell, by all means, the civilian demonstrations against Gaddafi's regime". He has been held in Zintan since his capture in Nov 2011 despite repeated ICC demands for Libya to hand him over for trial. Charges before the Tripoli court also included kidnapping, plunder, sabotage and embezzlement of public funds. Human rights groups have expressed concerns about the trial, criticising the fact that the accused have had only limited access to lawyers and key documents. Meanwhile, Libya's eastern city of Benghazi has been plunged into darkness as clashes between pro-government forces and Islamist fighters have knocked out three of five power stations serving the city, the country's second largest, officials said on Monday.
Power has been off for 16 hours a day in the port city where forces loyal to the official government based in the east have been fighting Islamist groups for 15 months in a battle that has turned parts of Benghazi into ruins. A spokesman at state power firm GECOL in Benghazi said output at the gas-fired main power plant was still stable at 650 megawatts on average a day, but three sub-stations distributing electricity inside the city had been damaged. He said ongoing fighting made it impossible to reach the damaged stations, adding that the state power firm was running out of spare parts.
A turbine needed to be repaired but a German firm that used to do the maintenance work had pulled out and was refusing to send any engineers to Benghazi. The closure of the city's port due to the fighting also made it difficult to import spare parts, he said, asking not to be named. The Benghazi fighting highlights the chaos in Libya, where armed groups back two governments vying for control. The official prime minister has been based in the east since the capital, Tripoli, was seized by a rival group which set up its own government.
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