Ms Chen's ordeal began in 2003 when her husband was imprisoned for attempting to breach a quarantine during a Sars epidemic, according to the Global Times newspaper.

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In his home country of Argentina, however, some critics have raised questions about the pope's actions during years of military dictatorship, when two priests in his order were imprisoned by authorities.

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"We should not be sending people to be tried in foreign courts and then, if convicted, imprisoned away from family and friends when it is perfectly feasible to try them in the courts in this country, " she said.

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This in turn enabled her to act as though she were utterly innocent, even when claiming to be the cousin of an imprisoned Scottish captain, or chatting to a Gestapo officer with 200lb of illegal pork in her suitcase.

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Nivens' mother was killed when he was 4 years old, and his father was imprisoned for her murder.

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When the boat finally washed back ashore, the 10 people left alive were imprisoned.

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In his book Why Crime Rates Fell, he says sentencing was lenient in the 60s and 70s, when crime rose, and then more prisons were built and more offenders were imprisoned.

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The Securities and Exchange Commission was able to exert authority over the brokers only when Richard Whitney, the president of the New York Stock Exchange, had shamed the entire profession by being imprisoned in Sing Sing in 1938 for embezzling money from his partners, his friends, his clients, his clubs, his brother and even his wife.

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In 2002, Arar was en route to Canada when he was detained by U.S. officials in New York and sent to Syria, where he was imprisoned for more than a year and endured severe beatings.

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