Her dad is imprisoned in the Middle East: after her father was given a life sentence for spying, Margaret Downs, 20, began fighting for his freedom.(THE COSMO POST)

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When Margaret Downs was 8 years old, her family moved 8,000 miles away from her home in Houston, Texas, to the Middle Eastern country of Qatar. Her dad, John, had been offered an oil-industry job working for the Qatar government and said he thought the experience would be life-changing for the family. He never could have guessed how true that statement would be.

At 16, Margaret moved back to the U.S. to finish high school, Not long after she returned. she got a call from her then-19-year-old brother, Nick, who was also stateside, attending Duke University. He told her that their father had been arrested--the police were investigating two e-mails he'd sent to a foreign embassy. But it didn't sound like it would amount to much more than a slap on the wrist. "At first, I kind of laughed it off," Margaret says. "Over the years, my family had had so many weird adventures that I figured it was just another one that we would joke about one day."

A month later, however, her younger brother, Thomas, then 14, sent an e-mail to Margaret and Nick. Thomas wrote that he and their mother had gone to visit their dad and that John was now in solitary confinement. Nick responded by explaining in greater detail how on the day of the arrest, Qatar Slate Security--like America's CIA--had come to the family's home and confiscated everything, from computers to cars. Margaret and Thomas read Nick's e-mail while on the phone with each other, and they both started crying. This was no adventure.

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A Family's Collapse

According to prosecutors, their dad had been in possession of "confidential economic information" about Qatar's natural-gas production and had planned to hand it over to a rival country in exchange for money. When the officials found out, they organized a sting operation. "All we really know for sure," Margaret says, "is that he made a foolish mistake."