They're one of the more political NGOs out there now. I don't know how there were years ago but their head since 2001, Tom Malinowski, was Madeline Albright's speechwriter and Clinton's special Assistant. Before that he was with the National Security Council.
by Sarah Leah Whitson
Published in: Foreign Policy
MAY 27, 2009
...
The brittle atmosphere of repression has started to fracture, giving way to expanded space for discussion and debate, proposals for legislative reform, and even financial compensation for families of the hundreds of men killed in a prison riot a decade ago. And while the reform initiatives, if we dare call them that, are fragile and tenuous (skirmishes are common between the would-be reformers and a security establishment quite comfortable using its untrammeled authority), political dynamism and vibrancy are appearing in a country that was closed in every way for decades.
Even more boldly, families of victims of the Abu Sleem prison killings, in which an estimated 1,200 inmates died on June 28 and 29, 1998, at the hands of state security forces, are organizing -- forming their own association -- after a decade of relative silence. Back in 2004, the government said it had established a commission to investigate the episode; no one is sure if such an investigation took place or what it may have found. Instead, the state has started to issue death certificates and offered up to 120,000 dinars (approximately $88,000) in compensation. Refusing the money, some victims' families are instead demanding a real public accounting and justice for their relatives' killers. The association has held a number of demonstrations despite threats of arrest and ostracism. And while members of the group spoke to us with great apprehension, the very presence of a public debate on abuses by the government's internal police is breathtaking for Libya.
The spirit of reform, however slowly, has spread to the bureaucracy as well. A new draft penal code restricts the death penalty to murder convictions (previously, being convicted of a whole host of crimes could get one killed), even as it continues broad restrictions on speech and organizations. The critically important separation of the Justice and Internal Security ministries in 2004 is producing results. The Justice Ministry is now playing more of an oversight role, calling on Internal Security to obey court decisions and pursue cases involving alleged abuse by police officers. Judges are traveling abroad for training. International groups are working to improve prison conditions (the admission that Libyans might have something to learn from the rest of the world is a breakthrough in and of itself). Even the Interior Ministry is now headed by a more modern minister, Gen. Abdelfattah al-Obeidi, who has reportedly been tasked with overhauling Libya's sclerotic police, who had grown accustomed to operating with impunity.
...
But the real impetus for the transformation rests squarely with a quasi-governmental organization, the Qaddafi Foundation for International Charities and Development. With Saif al-Islam, one of Qaddafi's sons, as its chairman, and university professor Yousef Sawani as its director, the organization has been outspoken on the need to improve the country's human rights record. It has had a number of showdowns with the Internal Security Ministry, with whom relations remain frosty. Saif al-Islam is also responsible for the establishment of the country's two semi private newspapers, Oea and Quryna.
...
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/05/28/tripoli-springThe Qaddafi Foundation for International Charities and Development is the fund we gave $200,000 to after Mutassim Gaddafi and Hillary Clinton met in 2009. Another $200,000 went to Aisha Gaddafi.
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