The Libyan state has decided to broadcast the trials of Gaddafi’ senior officials via its satellite channels to calm and tame the instincts of revenge and hatred that have clearly begun dominating the daily life of Libyans.

It seemed as if Libya had been a civilized society comparable to developed countries, starting with escorting the accused out of police cars, surrounded by official policemen with official governmental uniforms, and ending with the hall form, the cage of the accused and the entry and exit of judges to and from the courtroom.

The Libyan state has decided to broadcast the trials of Gaddafi’ senior officials via its satellite channels to calm and tame the instincts of revenge and hatred that have clearly begun dominating the daily life of Libyans.

It seemed as if Libya had been a civilized society comparable to developed countries, starting with escorting the accused out of police cars, surrounded by official policemen with official governmental uniforms, and ending with the hall form, the cage of the accused and the entry and exit of judges to and from the courtroom.

However, many people around Libya have not been convinced by this decoration, unreal in many of its contents, because they know that the judiciary is inactive in many cities for different reasons; tribal, ideological, etc. Therefore, the first messages of the state have not succeeded, whether internally or externally in claiming its ability to provide fair trials in any type of courts all over Libya.

While the accused appear in clean clothes and shaved beards, everyone knows the serious violations made against each defendant accused of dealing with Gaddafi’s regime, as if we were in one way or another reflecting the practices of Gaddafi’s regime in the new mirror of the 17^th of February.

Dialectic of the part and the whole

In our local culture, we always discuss many public affair-related ideas without serious controls that allow us to raise the overall performance level through participation. For example, we talk about the importance of building an institution or a ministry, bringing in someone, a politician, a technocrat, etc., to run it. During these debates, we strongly believe this is the perfect solution for many of our cultural, historical and social issues, adopting division policies instead of regarding the state as integrated units, in form and content, so that if we lose governance and rationalization in an institution/ministry, we will consequently lose them in most associated contexts.

Therefore, I say that the reform and rehabilitation of the judiciary to carry out the task of justice establishment, is mainly related to the rehabilitation of all the state facilities and sectors, whether or not related to it organically and functionally.

The weak and even paralyzed institutions concerned with imposing security and the state influence and power will be a poisoned dagger in the back of the desired justice.

We can also say that the unclear identity of the state that does not adopt a specific system and form of ruling significantly affects judiciary and subjects it to various forms of legal cultures not associated with a public system that sets guidelines and controls performance rules.

Thus, the new justice will become a mere illusion and cannot be rooted in a society that has not been able to organize a real peaceful dialogue on its social contract and political regime.

In light of the lost identity of information, corrupted economy, militias’ control, a health system that is on the verge of collapse and paralyzed state facilities, Libya can be called a loose if not failed state, which makes the claim for a justice system a mere illusion.

Are lawyers a problem or a solution?

A universally accepted rule in the science of penal and criminal procedure is that no trial session can be held in the absence of the defendant’s lawyer. This helps achieve a degree of balance in trials especially that sanctions stipulated in the Criminal Code are often characterized by cruelty and deprivation of freedom for relatively long periods.

When the trial of the former regime figures started, the bench had to appoint a lawyer to defend them. When a lawyer volunteered to defend the former head of the intelligence service, Abuzed Dorda, the former spokesperson of the Integrity and Nationalism Commission (Liaison Office of Revolutionary Commissions, new in February 17 sense), lawyer Omar Habbassi, flared up and demanded that lawyers boycott that lawyer.

Therefore, because of these campaigns of political rather than legal nature, the trial of another defendant has been postponed because there is no lawyer to defend him.

The cultural heritage of Libyan society is derived from Gaddafi’s regime and tribal habits and manners which are in turn derived from machismo and masculinity. In such a society with no justice rules, in legal and philosophical sense, it would be difficult to say that finding a volunteer lawyer or entrusting a lawyer by the court to defend any of the former regime figures is a principal of criminal justice.

Lawyers were part of a major corruption system that pervaded the state under Gaddafi and contributed to the corruption of the government and judiciary apparatus. Even those who had a quasi-opponent political activity against some methods of the former regime were subject to the above rules when they practiced legal profession.

What challenges the just trial of those defendants is the position of a lawyer who pretends to be a patriot, agitates the public to earn fame, and overlooks the justice rules that transcend political bickering.

Independence of the judiciary

The Libyan judiciary has a difficult task given the pressure of a people that still think the revolution with its transgressions is ongoing. Will the judiciary prosecute the figures of Gaddafi’s regime for simply belonging to this regime and consequently falls into the same fault of the former regime and merely political belonging and identity become the most prominent headline in the elimination of yesterday’s opponents? Or will it prosecute them for only crimes of money and bloodsheds they committed before and during the February 17th revolution?