The killing of Libyan journalist and BBC broadcaster Mohamed Mustafa Ramadan outside London’s Central Mosque in 1980, and the recent assassination of Major General Fawzi al‑Mansouri, head of military intelligence in eastern Libya, as he left a mosque in Benghazi, are separated by nearly half a century. Yet the architecture of eliminating opponents has barely changed. The mindset that governs political violence in Libya remains stubbornly intact, as if frozen in time.

Ramadan was a journalist whose voice challenged Muammar Gaddafi’s authoritarianism from London’s airwaves, becoming a familiar presence to Arabic‑speaking audiences. Al‑Mansouri, by contrast, operated within a far more fragmented and combustible landscape: a Libya split between east and west, where rivalry is no longer ideological but existential—rooted in competing claims to resources, legitimacy, and power.

What binds the two murders, despite the gulf in time and context, is a chilling symmetry: both men were killed moments after leaving a house of worship. It is a stark reminder that Libya’s political history has not moved forward. The era of Gaddafi and the era that followed his death are twins in their reliance on elimination as a political tool.

What binds the two murders, despite the gulf in time and context, is a chilling symmetry: both men were killed moments after leaving a house of worship. It is a stark reminder that Libya’s political history has not moved forward. The era of Gaddafi and the era that followed his death are twins in their reliance on elimination as a political tool.

To understand this continuity, one must look at what analysts at Chatham House describe as Libya’s “violent deep state.” The security institutions inherited from Gaddafi were never rebuilt on professional foundations. They remained networks of personal and tribal loyalty, where violence is not an aberration but a structural feature. As........

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