Archbishop Desmond Tutu is to put pressure on the Libyan Government to reveal what it knows about a political activist who has been missing for almost two decades.

According to a Mail & Guardian Online report, Tutu has called on Muammar Gaddafi's regime to 'urgently clarify the fate and whereabouts of Jaballa Matar, a prominent political dissident'. Tutu says that it is almost 20 years since Matar was abducted from Cairo and sent back to Libya. The report notes that smuggled letters, written between 1992 and 1995, have revealed that Matar was being held in Abu Salim, a political prison in Tripoli. A Human Rights Watch report released last year claimed Matar had been seen in a Tripoli high-security prison in 2002, giving free speech activists fresh hope that he may still be alive.
Full Mail & Guardian Online report