On August 1, 2009 110 people were put on trial, including prominent reformists, journalists and writers.

Through their control of various oversight institutions, the judiciary and state-run broadcasting, they have managed to block many of the proposed changes, jailing prominent reformists and closing their newspapers.

Meade's post-Civil War career marked him as one of the Navy's most prominent reformist and technologically-minded officers.

Lei Yu, a prominent reformist who is now vice chairman of the Guangxi region in southern China, ventured an answer to that question in an interview earlier this year.

It started with twenty people who were arrested in the protests and would later expanded to over one hundred and included prominent reformists, intellectuals and academics.

In November, 16 men including nine prominent reformists were given sentences ranging from five to 30 years in the specialised criminal court.

By the morning of 21 August, Dubček and other prominent reformists had been arrested, and were later flown to Moscow.

Well, apparently he and several other prominent reformists decided to create their own circle first.

The minister of interior, Prince Naif, who by all accounts was enraged by the petition, sent the police to round up several prominent reformists - professors, writers, activists.

Ali Mohammad Ghorbani is a "prominent" Iranian reformist.