Political Prisoners

A political prisoner is someone held in prison or otherwise detained, perhaps under house arrest, for his or her involvement in political activity.

 

Some understand the term "political prisoner" narrowly, equating it with the term prisoner of conscience (POC). Amnesty International campaigns for the release of prisoners of conscience, which include both political prisoners as well as those imprisoned for their religious or philosophical beliefs. To reduce controversy and as a matter of principle, the organization's policy only applies for prisoners who have not committed or advocated violence. Thus there are political prisoners who do not fit the narrower criteria for POCs.

 

In the parlance of many violent groups and their sympathizers, a "political prisoner" includes people who are imprisoned because they are awaiting trial for, or have been convicted of, actions usually qualified as terrorism. The assumption is that these actions were morally justified by a legitimate fight against the government that imprisons the said persons, including in some cases democratic governments. For instance, French anarchist groups typically call the former members of Action Directe held in France for murder of "political prisoners."

 

Some also include all convicted for treason and espionage in the category of "political prisoners."

In many cases, political prisoners are imprisoned with no legal veneer directly through extrajudicial processes.

However, it also happens that political prisoners are arrested and tried with a veneer of legality, where false criminal charges, manufactured evidence, and unfair trials (kangaroo courts, show trials) are used to disguise the fact that an individual is a political prisoner.

 

This is common in situations which may otherwise be decried nationally and internationally as a human rights violation and suppression of a political dissident. A political prisoner can also be someone that has been denied bail unfairly, denied parole when it would reasonably have been given to a prisoner charged with a comparable crime, or special powers may be invoked by the judiciary.

 

Particularly in this latter situation, whether an individual is regarded as a political prisoner may depend upon subjective political perspective or interpretation of the evidence.