TRIPOLI: The NGO Human Rights Watch said Wednesday that military authorities in eastern Libya executed at least 31 people earlier this year, the first reported death sentences to be carried out in the country since 2010, according to the group.

Forces under the control of military leader Khalifa Haftar and his clan executed the people between late August and September 10 “following grossly unfair military trials,” HRW said in a statement, adding another 50 people in detention were “at imminent risk of execution.”

Libya has struggled to regain stability since former ruler Muammar Qaddafi was toppled and killed in 2011, and the country remains divided between the Haftars in the east and a UN-recognized government in the west.

Haftar’s 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, HRW’s deputy Middle East and North Africa director.

He called on the international community to pressure the military authorities to halt any future executions.

Khawaja said the country had gone more than 15 years without an execution, but the eastern authorities “shattered that moratorium in a matter of weeks.”

“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,” he added.

HRW said the detainees were being held in a prison about 100 kilometers east of Benghazi.

It is largely under military control and outside the jurisdiction of the judicial authorities, and is frequently accused of human rights violations, torture and ill-treatment.

The death penalty is still in force in Libya for the crimes of murder, terrorism and offenses against state security, though in recent years sentences have not been carried out.