Only four miners were convicted of any charges, and were quickly pardoned by the sympathetic populist governor.
Similarly, his eldest son, Ibrahim Ismail, was convicted in the 1980s of shooting dead a man in a nightclub during a feud, but was quickly pardoned.
Security forces who commit human rights abuses rarely face sanction – Fiji's current constitution entrenches immunities for any government action between 2006 and 2014 – and even when security officials are convicted of crimes, they are often quickly pardoned and released from prison, the Amnesty report says.
In 2007 five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who had been sentenced to death in Libya after being tried on charges of having deliberately infected children there with HIV were extradited to Bulgaria and quickly pardoned by its president, defusing widespread outcry over the case and preventing the situation from posing an obstacle to Libya's return to the international community.
In March, a Swiss man who used spray paint to vandalize images of the king and Queen Sirikit was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was quickly deported after the king pardoned him.
Or if you prefer, check out this calico lobster that was spotted in the lobster tank at a Summer Shack restaurant by veteran seafood chef Jasper White, who quickly pardoned it.
The Pakistani government arrested Khan, but Musharraf quickly pardoned him, praising his service to the country.
If his successor, Gerald Ford, seemed to offer a fresh start, it was quickly soured by Ford's pardon of Nixon one month after the resignation an action that many cynically read as part of a deal to switch occupants of the White House.
As news of the pardons broke on Wednesday, Fahmy and Mohamed were quickly released from prison.
This was quickly followed by presidential lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Trump both proclaiming that a president can pardon himself.
But none spent more than a few months behind bars, as their sentences, usually three years in prison, were quickly suspended by judges and their criminal records erased in presidential pardons.
