A group of 20 Libyans gathered in front of Parliament this morning to protest against a Tripoli court judgment which sentenced the son of former dictator Muammar Gaddafi to death.

Last week, Saif Gaddafi was condemned to death along with eight other figures from the former dictatorship, including the former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi and Gaddafi’s last prime minister, Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi.

The trial, which opened in Tripoli in April last year, has been mired in controversy after human rights groups and the international criminal court questioned its standards.

In a peaceful protest, Libyans residing in Malta rejected the actions of the Libya Dawn militias that “forced the judges of the mock court of Tripoli to issue oppressive sentences against those who fell in their hands”.

The trial was a political one and had nothing to do with the domain of law and justice, the protesters argued.

They considered the trial null and void because the procedures of arrest, interrogation, investigation and imprisonment were carried out by “incompetent criminal gangs and not by the authority of the judiciary and prosecution”.

“The court itself is originally not legitimate since it is located in the hijacked city of Tripoli, which is under the command of a power-usurping government that is not recognised by the world,” they said.