Myanmar court finds Suu Kyi guilty: Additional 18 months house arrest ordered

Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi was Tuesday ordered to stay under house arrest for 18 months after a prison court convicted the Nobel laureate at the end of her internationally condemned trial.
The sentence provoked instant anger from Britain and other countries because it means that the 64-year-old opposition leader will remain in detention during elections promised by Myanmar’s iron-fisted ruling junta next year.
The court at Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison sentenced her to three years imprisonment and hard labour for breaching the terms of her house arrest following an incident in which a US man swam to her lakeside residence in May.
But Than Shwe, head of the ruling junta, signed an order commuting the sentence and allowing Suu Kyi to serve out just a year-and-a-half under house arrest, Home Affairs Minister General Maung Oo said after the verdict.
“Thank you for the verdict,” a grim-faced Suu Kyi, wearing pink and light grey traditional Burmese dress said after the court’s announcement, according to an AFP reporter in the court.
American John Yettaw, 54, the man who swam to her house, was sentenced to seven years of hard labour and imprisonment on three separate charges but it was not clear if the terms would run consecutively or concurrently.
Minister Maung Oo made a surprise entrance to the courtroom just minutes after the verdict was read out, saying that Suu Kyi would be taken back to her house under similar conditions to her previous time in detention.
“The authorities charged Aung San Suu Kyi inevitably and also uncomfortably, but they had to obey the judgement,” Maung Oo said.
“Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of General Aung San. This is also for the peaceful security of the country and also to move towards democratisation,” said Maung Oo.
Aung San, the country’s independence hero, was assassinated in 1947.
Maung Oo said that the sentence could be shortened “if she lives well in the suspended sentence.”
Security forces sealed off the area around the jail and the junta allowed diplomats from all foreign embassies in Yangon and local journalists to attend the hearing.
Suu Kyi has already been in detention for 14 of the past 20 years since Myanmar’s ruling military junta refused to recognise her National League for Democracy’s landslide victory in elections in 1990.
State-run newspapers carried a commentary Tuesday that warned Suu Kyi’s supporters not to cause trouble and told foreign countries not to meddle in Myanmar’s affairs.
“The people who favour democracy do not want to see riots and protests that can harm their goal,” said the version in the government mouthpiece New Light of Myanmar.
Critics had accused the junta of using the charges as an excuse to keep her locked up for the elections due in 2010, particularly as they were lodged just days before the latest period of her house arrest was due to expire.
The military has ruled the impoverished nation with an iron fist since 1962.
Suu Kyi’s lawyers argued during the trial that she could not be held responsible for Yettaw’s actions, and that the legal framework for her initial detention at her house was under a 1975 law that has been superseded by later constitutions.
Suu Kyi told the court that she did not report the American to the authorities for humanitarian reasons. The junta says she gave food, shelter and assistance to Yettaw, who has diabetes.
Yettaw, a Mormon whose teenage son died two years ago in a motorbike crash, had testified that he swam to her house after receiving a “message from God” that he must protect Suu Kyi against a terrorist plot to assassinate her.
Yettaw got three years for breaching security laws, three years for immigration violations and one year for a municipal charge of illegal swimming.
The case has drawn international outrage at Myanmar’s military regime, which is already under stiff US and European Union sanctions. Diplomats had said that the EU was set to impose further restrictions in the case of a guilty verdict.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was “saddened and angry” by the verdict, while Malaysian foreign minister Anifah Aman called for an “urgent meeting” of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Myanmar is a member.

Courtesy of AFP, Yangon