BANGKOK — Daw
Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese pro-democracy leader, was sentenced
Tuesday to three years of hard labor, but her sentence was commuted to a new
term under house arrest of up to 18 months, diplomats reported.
In
a trial that was being closely watched — and had been roundly condemned — by
the international community, the court in Myanmar
found her guilty of violating the terms of the house arrest under which she has
already been held for 14 of the last 20 years.
She was put
on trial after an American intruder swam across a lake in downtown Yangon and
spent two nights at her lakeside villa in early May.
The
intruder, John Yettaw, 53, of Falcon, Missouri, was sentenced Tuesday to seven
years of hard labor, according to the diplomats, who were reached by telephone
in Yangon, the main city in Myanmar, the former Burma.
Mr. Yettaw
was reported last week to have suffered a series of epileptic seizures and to
have been taken to a hospital. On Tuesday he was reported to have been returned
to his cell in preparation for the reading of the verdict.
Mrs. Aung
San Suu Kyi’s sentence means she will be able to return home from the prison
guest house where she has been held since the trial began in May 18.
Her lawyer,
U Nyan Win, said Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, 64, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize
laureate, had been “prepared for the worst” and had collected a supply of
reading matter and medications to sustain her. She had been facing a prison
term of up to five years.
“From my
point of view she is innocent and she should be acquitted,” Mr. Nyan Win said,
speaking by telephone in advance of the verdict.
“But this is
a political case and the authorities will decide it from a political point of
view,” he said, adding, “I have never known of an acquittal in a political
case.”
Mrs. Aung
San Suu Kyi’s trial has been a setback for the emerging possibility of improved
relations between Myanmar and Western nations, particularly the United States,
which had said it was reviewing its policy of economic sanctions and political
confrontation.
But in a
statement last week, the State Department appeared to stand by that
possibility, saying, “The door remains open for the regime to respect the
wishes of the Burmese people and international community, and to step toward
the path of engagement after so many years of isolation.”
As a
“welcome first step,” it called for the release of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi along
with all 2,100 political prisoners said to be detained by the military junta.
Some
analysts have called the arrest of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi a ploy to keep her in
detention at least through a parliamentary election scheduled for next year.
Her latest six-year term of house arrest expired in mid-May.
The election
could put a civilian face on the military rule that has isolated and
impoverished Myanmar, formerly Burma, since a coup in 1962. It will be the
first nationwide election since 1990, which the military annulled after Mrs.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, won by a
landslide.
The
government newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar, has insisted that the trial of
Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, like those of the other prisoners, is not political, but
is based on pure criminal conduct.
Since her
arrest on May 14, Mr. Nyan Win said, she has been held in an individual
dormitory in Insein Prison, where the trial is being held. He said she lives on
the second floor together with two female housekeepers who were arrested and
charged with her. Five prison matrons live on the ground floor, he said.
Mr. Yettaw,
53, of Falcon, Mo., faced at least five years in prison as an accomplice in
violating Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest as well as for immigration
violations and for violating a local ordinance that bans swimming across Inya
Lake
During the
trial, which began May 18, Mr. Nyan Win said Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi declared her
innocence and said that she was being charged for political reasons.
At a news
conference last week in Yangon, the national police chief, Brig. Gen. Khin Yi,
said that 20 police officers had been demoted, and that some had been given
jail terms for allowing Mr. Yettaw to breach security.
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