Gadhafi's son not likely to be executed right away

The son of Muammar Gadhafi is unlikely to face a firing squad anytime soon, though he was convicted and sentenced to death on Tuesday on charges of murder and inciting genocide during the country's 2011 unrest.

The sentence was handed down in absentia because Seif al-Islam Gadhafi remains in the hands of a militia in western Libya that has refused to hand him over for the past four years - one sign of the country's bitter fragmentation since his father's fall from power.

The uncertainty surrounding his fate underlines both the weakness of the courts and the general chaos into which this North African nation has descended, split between rival militias and governments while being threatened by an affiliate of the extremist Islamic State, which has benefited from the turmoil and captured some areas of Libya.