Political prisoner

A political prisoner is anyone held in prison or otherwise detained, perhaps under house arrest, because their ideas or image either challenge or pose a real or potential threat to the state. In many cases, a veneer of legality is used to disguise the fact that someone is a political prisoner. Trumped-up 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.

Examples of persons thought to be current political prisoners

• Lori Berenson - Peru (American human rights activist convicted of assisting terrorists in a Peruvian court)
• David Gilbert - USA (SDS anti-war radical convicted of assisting robbery resulting in three homicides in US court)
• Leonard Peltier - USA (Native American activist convicted of killing two FBI agents in US court)
• Aung San Suu Kyi - Burma (leader of political party victorious in last Burmese elections; military government ignored results) (democracy activist ordered under house arrest by Burmese military tribunal)
• Mumia Abu-Jamal - USA (African-American activist convicted of killing police officer Daniel Faulkner in US court)
• Delbert Africa - USA
• Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin - USA (African-American convicted of killing a sheriff's deputy in US court)
• Camilo Mejia - USA (convicted of deserting his military unit)
• Pasteur Bizimungu - Rwanda
• Phuntsok Nyidron - Tibet
• Gedhun Choekyi Nyima - Tibet
• Michael Riconosciuto - USA
• Jeff "Free" Luers - USA (convicted of politically-motivated property destruction)
• Mikhail Trepashkin - Russia (convicted on trumped-up charges for his investigation of the involvement of the FSB in Russian apartment bombings)
• Robert Thaxton - USA
• Cho Sung-hye - North Korea (Returned to North Korea against her will by China)
• Ernst Zundel - Germany http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=5337
• Samir Geagea - Lebanon (leader of the Lebanese Forces, a christian political party in Lebanon)
• Akbar Ganji - Iran (Former Revolutionary Guard and Journalist imprisoned in Evin Prison since April 22, 2000. He was imprisoned for his participating in the Berlin conference "Iran after the elections" after the February 2000 Iranian Election)