"One of the defendants, Jamal Ahmad al-Haji, is a writer and government critic. In an article he issued a few days before his arrest, he called for "freedom, democracy, a constitutional state, and law" in Libya. And then Human Rights Watch's Sarah Leah Whitson said this: "In recent years, Libya has sought to foster better relations with the United States and European countries, in part by seeking to improve its human rights image." No Sarah. Libya has sought to foster better relations with the United States and European countries by seeking to open their economies to those countries, by not bothering Israel, and by following the foreign policy dictates of the U.S. (thanks K.)