Libya's Ignored Political Prisoner, America's Conscience

Via Hugh Hewitt, Claudia Rosett has another excellent column on Libyan political dissident and prisoner Fathi Eljahmi, about whom we've written before. Her opening paragraphs are eloquent testimony to both her concern for Eljahmi and her grasp of the need to eliminate the regimes that breed terror:

"Unless someone with influence acts soon, this column must serve as an obituary for the hopes held out earlier this year of political reform in Moammar Gadhafi's Libya. More concretely, we may soon be reading obituaries for one of Libya's top democratic dissidents, Fathi Eljahmi--who is reportedly ill and in danger of dying in the hands of Libya's security police.

"For anyone wondering why we should care, apart from such vague considerations as sheer human decency, the latest answer lies in the charred schoolhouse ruins and children's graves of Beslan, Russia. The only real hope of ending this global war is to replace the tyrannies that spawn terror with free societies that engender love of life, not death. In that endeavor, such democrats as Mr. Eljahmi are allies we cannot afford either morally or politically to abandon. They are our own best hope."

But, you're probably thinking, isn't this the new Libya, with a reformed Gadhafi who seeks better relations with the West? Not really, it seems:

"Less than three weeks after Mr. Eljahmi's release, and just after the freshly rehabilitated Gadhafi had hosted visits to Tripoli by Tony Blair and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, Libyan security squads detained Mr. Eljahmi once again, along with his wife and eldest son. Although 'detained' is a perhaps too polite a word for a process in which Gadhafi's thugs assaulted Mr. Eljahmi at the door of his home, then dragged him away and have since held him incommunicado.

"There has been no news of his wife and son, a silence alarming in itself. But last week, a message from sources inside Libya reached a group of Libyan-Americans in the U.S., who have been campaigning for democratic reform back in Libya--the American-Libyan Freedom Alliance. One of ALFA's leaders got word that Mr. Eljahmi has been transferred to Libyan security headquarters in Tripoli, a dread place known as Zawyet Al Dahmani, which is Libya's version of the old Soviet Lubyanka. With his health fast deteriorating, the 63-year-old Mr. Eljahmi, a diabetic with a heart condition, now in the un-tender care of Gadhafi's interrogators, is reportedly in danger of dying."

Other than the WSJ's OpinionJournal.com, the Western press is ignoring Eljahmi's plight. A search on Google News turns up all of two hits -- both links to Rosett's article. So, fellow residents of the blogosphere, here's a story that needs significant PR and additional research. Let's spread the word and ensure that American victories in such countries in Libya are good for more than photo-ops. As Ms. Rosett says:

"Toadying to Gadhafi is no way to keep him in line. If an American demand for the release of Mr. Eljahmi is enough to start Gadhafi ordering up more nuclear blueprints from China, then you can bet your sweet uranium Gadhafi was going to try it anyway--and we'd be smarter to keep him running scared, rather than fat, sassy and secure."