Oct 14, 2008
Tripoli, (Reuters): Libya freed a dissident who was jailed last year for trying to hold a demonstration in Tripoli after a Libyan charity intervened to secure his release, the charity said on Tuesday.

Idris Boufayed was arrested in February 2007, charged with trying to overthrow the government and sentenced to 25 years in prison, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch.

It said Boufayed had planned a protest in Tripoli to mark the first anniversary of a clash between demonstrators and police in Benghazi. While in jail he fell ill with lung cancer.

His health worsened in recent weeks, according to the Gaddafi International Foundation, a charity run by a prominent son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam.

"It asked the concerned authorities to release him for humanitarian reasons as his state of health deteriorated," Youssef Radwane, the charity's executive director, told Reuters. "The Foundation achieved its goal by seeing him freed."

He said the foundation helped ensure Boufayed was moved from prison to hospital and was ready to help him travel abroad for further medical treatment if he or his family requested it.

Newspaper Libya al-Youm cited human rights activists at home and abroad as saying the Libyan government freed Boufayed for fear he may die in jail after he was left uncared for.

HRW said it welcomed Boufayed's release and asked the authorities to ensure he gets the medical care he needs.

"Libya also needs to free the 10 other men who were arrested with him 20 months ago," HRW Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson said in a statement.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice raised specific human rights concerns with Gaddafi during a visit to Libya last month, the first by a U.S. secretary of state in 55 years.

Libya, once shunned by the West, moved to end decades of international isolation in 2003 by accepting civil responsibility for the 1988 Lockerbie airline bombing and scrapping a programme of banned weapons.