Political prisoners
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A political prisoner may be someone held in prison or otherwise detained, perhaps under house arrest, because their ideas or image are deemed by a government to either challenge or threaten the authority of the state. Typically, the imprisonment of people on political grounds is done under extrajudical processes, where the veneer of legality and terminology are used to disguise the fact that an individual is a political prisoner.
False or exaggerated criminal charges may have been used to imprison the political prisoner, or he or she may have been denied bail unfairly, denied parole when it would reasonably have been given to another prisoner, or special powers may be invoked by the judiciary. Who is or is not regarded as a political prisoner may depend upon one's own subjective political perspective.
[edit] See Also
This page is part of the Prison Abolition Guide.
