When Libyan poet Khaled Mattawa was 13 years old, Muammar Qaddafi’s regime conducted public hangings of alleged traitors in Mattawa’s home city of Benghazi.

One of Libya’s most notorious people smugglers, who was also a senior officer in the country’s EU-funded coast guard, has been assassinated in a “mafia-style” ambush. Abdel-Rahman Milad ...