Libya should follow its release of 88 prisoners on the night of October 15, 2009 with the release of all political prisoners and those unjustly detained in Libyan jails, Human Rights Watch said today.

The return of one man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing to Libya, where he got a hero's welcome, has caused an international outcry while the return of hundreds of boat migrants to Libya, where they face certain detention and probable brutal mistreatment, causes nary a peep.

African immigrants who attempt the dangerous boat journey across the Mediterranean to Italy face a double dose of hardship. Since May, if their vessels are intercepted by the Italian authorities, they have been summarily returned to Libya, where migrants typically suffer widespread mistreatment.

Italy intercepts African boat migrants and asylum seekers, fails to screen them for refugee status or other vulnerabilities, and forcibly returns them to Libya, where many are detained in inhuman and degrading conditions and abused.

One got a glorious homecoming. The other was left to rot. Bill Frelick on the paradoxes of justice, Libya-style-and the perils of pretending Gaddafi has changed his stripes.

Scotland's release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in connection with the Lockerbie bombing of 1988, was supposed to be Gaddafi's ultimate international relations coup in a year when, at times, Libya held the chairmanship of the African Union and the presidency of both the UN Security Council and of the General Assembly. But Megrahi's homecoming did not go as smoothly as planned.

Colonel Mu'ammar al-Gaddafi should mark his 40th anniversary in power by wiping repressive laws off the books and freeing political prisoners.

What is surprising is the recent assault on the ICC from within the African Union, despite, as outlined in a recent communiqué of its Peace and Security Council, its "unflinching commitment to combating impunity." Several of the AU's North African members - who are not, incidentally, parties to the ICC - are trying to undercut its support on the continent.