AMNESTY

To: Amnesty Committee Advisors

From: The Office of The President

Re: List of Prisoners

Note: To preserve the prisoner’s identity from the press, names have been withheld from this memo. Here follows a list of the nine prisoners up for a possibility of amnesty. All are considered as very little risk to society. Please inform the President of your final decision.

Number 1 is a 20-year-old student. He broke into the police’s computer system and tried to erase his previous criminal record (some parking tickets). He was also charged with fraud after police discovered he had hacked into a pizza company’s computer and ordered himself free pizzas for over a year. He is serving a five-year sentence.

Number 2 is a 55-year-old engineer. He was charged with manslaughter after he hit and killed a child while driving drunk. He has no previous criminal record. He is serving a ten-year sentence.


Number 3 is a 30-year-old mother of two. She was charged with drug dealing when police found half a kilogram of marijuana in her apartment. She says it was for personal use, but drug laws are very strict in this country. She is serving a five-year sentence.

Number 4 is a 24-year-old student and activist. He was arrested during an anti-globalisation protest and charged with terrorism. He is a leader of a non-violent social movement and did not participate directly in any violent acts during his protests. He is serving a three-year sentence.

Number 5 is a 40-year-old businessman. He was charged with fraud when police discovered that he had stolen over $2 million from his company using a false system of accounting. He is serving a ten-year sentence.

Number 6 is an unemployed woman. She was arrested for stealing food from a supermarket. This was not the first time that she had stolen food, and she had been warned. She is serving an eight-year sentence.

Number 7 is a prisoner of war. He was taken prisoner during the last war with the country’s neighbors six years ago. He was a marine and engineer and was responsible for bombing a small village in the mountains. He says he was following orders. The two countries are now at peace. He is serving a twenty-year sentence.

Number 8 is a landlord. He was arrested for keeping a block of flats in very dirty, and some cases dangerous conditions. He was also renting the apartments to illegal immigrants and charging a lot of money for them. He is serving a seven-year sentence.

Number 9 is a politician. She was a leading member of the Ultra political party, an extreme group who believed that criminals should be executed and immigrants expelled from the country. The Ultra party is very weak now. She was arrested for stealing party funds and is serving a ten year jail sentence.

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Language Points:

In view of the fact ......

The prisoner of war should be fred. In view of the fact that he was just following orders from his leaders, he is not guilty at all . He deserves amnesty.

The main reason why..

The main reason why I won't grant amnesty to Prisoner number 7 is that she had been warned before she was caught and yet she continuously steal food.

Due to…

Due to terrorism, the activist was sent to prison.

Seeing as how…

Seeing as how he killed the girl, Prisoner number 2 should suffer the consequences.

… Because of this…

… On account of this…

… That’s the reason why…

Vocabulary:

amnesty
fraud
activist
manslaughter
sentence

______1. trickery, deception
______2. A judicial decision, especially one setting the punishment to be inflicted on a convicted person.
______3. The unlawful killing of one human by another without express or implied intent to do injury.
______4. a person who works energetically to achieve political or social goals
______5. a general pardon for offenses against the government