Political competition is nonexistent, much of the opposition has been driven abroad or imprisoned, the internet and media are heavily censored and reports of arbitrary imprisonment and torture are frequent.
I have on file cases of Britons recently imprisoned for crimes as relatively mild as abusive tweeting, poll-rigging, Boat Race obstructing, cathedral desecrating, job-application falsifying, expenses fiddling, urinatingon a war memorial, speeding-point switching, licence fee non-paying, and googling in court.
Around 500 politicians, officials and businessmen were imprisoned in a populist campaign against waste and corruption.
Inspired by these old, dark tales I piled on the heartache, not an easy sell for a children's story (the heroine, a little girl, is eventually imprisoned and comes to a terrible end).
Months before his death, Abdullah may have been alarmed by sensational stories about his daughters allegedly imprisoned in the palace.
Svetlana Bakhmina, imprisoned for her part in the "Yukos affair" that saw oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky being sent to a colony in the Russian Far East, was taken to Mordovia.
At least, unlike five other imprisoned Al-Jazeera staff, she is outside Egypt.
Her 15-year-old niece was raped in front of her and she was imprisoned.
The plan to build a 40,000 all-seater stadium on the site where some of the world's most dangerous paramilitaries were once imprisoned has been one of the most controversial issues to dog the power-sharing executive in recent years.
He made it clear that he was ready to challenge the Malaysian political elite that sacked and imprisoned him.
Michael Attenborough says Cameron can no longer ignore a brutal regime that arrests people for attending a play, has imprisoned a theatre director for 15 hours with no toilet, and has threatened to bulldoze a man's home for allowing blacklisted actors to perform.
