He paints himself as the victim of a widespread left-wing conspiracy, and he has accused magistrates of persecuting him for political reasons.
"Shylock tries to get his revenge, sure, but Antonio and the Christians, I think they're monsters – these Bullingdon Club types who've persecuted him for years, spat on him, kicked him.
When friends tried to suggest that he might have a drinking problem, he shot back that they had joined the people persecuting him for his defiance of the establishment and his work on behalf of the poor.
The police are persecuting him for a meeting he can't properly remember with a friend who moves in an impenetrably shadowy underworld and whose significance is never explained.
In interviews over the last two years, Mr. Anderson has said that he runs a legitimate "free enterprise organization" and that the United States government -- which he has called, variously, a criminal organization or an agent of Satan -- is persecuting him for showing Christians that the tax laws are a hoax.
Khodorkovsky has always denied the charges, claiming that the Kremlin persecuted him for criticizing the Putin administration.
Douglas says he won't budge and that the city is persecuting him for his unpopular religious practices.
The nightmare society Hugo depicts in Les Miserables is one so cruel that it sends a poor man to prison for nineteen years because he stole a loaf of bread, and then persecutes him for the rest of his days.
Snowden has sought asylum in Ecuador and in an undated letter sent to Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa seen by Reuters, said the United States was illegally persecuting him for revealing its electronic surveillance programme, Prism, but made it clear he did not intend to be muzzled.
They began to persecute him and create problems for him, culminating in the threat to his daughters of compulsory marriage.
