EXCLUSIVE: Freed Libyan activist dies

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By Eli Lake

A quiet effort by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to free Libya's most prominent political prisoner ended in tragedy Thursday when doctors pronounced Fathi al-Jahmi dead in a Jordanian hospital.

First arrested by Libyan authorities in 2002 for advocating democratic reform in his authoritarian nation, Mr. al-Jahmi, 68, was already in a coma when he was taken from his cell on May 5 and flown to Amman with security agents in tow.

The dissident's brother, Mohammed al-Jahmi, said the release - which came too late to save Mr. al-Jahmi's life - likely resulted at least in part from Mr. Biden's previously unreported appeals to Libyan authorities. The former Democratic senator from Delaware had intervened previously in 2004 to get Mr. al-Jahmi released from an earlier detention.

Mohammed al-Jahmi contrasted the vice president's efforts to free his brother with those of the Bush administration, which secured a landmark 2003 agreement that persuaded longtime Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi to relinquish a fledgling nuclear program in return for normal relations with the United States.

President Bush "promised me he would do something and he did nothing," Mr. al-Jahmi said about his brother. "But [President] Obama, and particularly Vice President Biden, did pressure the Libyans to let my brother at the last second go to another country for medical treatment.

"Unfortunately, the Libyans were insincere and always intended to finish Fathi off, so he would not die in Libya. By the time he was sent to Jordan, it was too late: He was in a coma and on a ventilator and not breathing on his own."

Elliott Abrams, a former deputy national security adviser for Mr. Bush, disputed the assertion about his administration.

"The Bush administration raised the case of Fathi al-Jahmi literally dozens of times, at all levels, so the statement that we 'did nothing' is false," Mr. Abrams said. "We got his prison conditions improved, then we got him better medical care, then we got him family visits.

"I cannot speak to what then-Senator Biden did, but obviously his efforts and all those of the U.S. government failed to get Fathi al-Jahmi released until his medical condition was too far gone. The Libyan government should have let him out long ago, and its refusal to do so no doubt contributed to his death."

Mr. al-Jahmi suffered from high blood pressure and diabetes. His family said that he was denied adequate medical treatment when he was in jail.