Lawyers for Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi expressed optimism about her case after the only witness allowed to testify for the defense addressed the court in her trial on charges of violating house arrest.
Closing arguments in a case that could send the Nobel Peace laureate to prison for five years are set to be heard tomorrow. The defense has argued that there is no legal basis for the charge that Aung San Suu Kyi had violated the terms of her house arrest when an uninvited American swam secretly to her home.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s supporters fear that she may be found guilty because the courts are under the influence of the ruling junta and usually mete out harsh punishment for political dissidents.
But one of Aung San Suu Kyi’s lawyers, Nyan Win, said on Thursday night he was “very confident of victory if the trial is carried out according to law.”
The court was in recess yesterday.
The trial has drawn outrage from the international community and Aung San Suu Kyi’s local supporters, who worry that the military junta has found an excuse to keep her detained through next year’s elections.
Her party won the last elections in 1990 but was not allowed to take power by the military, which has run the country since 1962.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s defense team acknowledges that 53-year-old John Yettaw swam to and entered her lakeside home, where he stayed for two days. They argue, however, that it was the duty of government guards outside her closely watched house to prevent any intruders.
Yettaw was taken to Aung San Suu Kyi’s residence on Thursday, accompanied by dozens of police, to reenact before court officials how he entered and left her compound, state-run newspapers said yesterday.
Kyi Win, the defense witness who is a legal expert and a member of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, highlighted what appears to be the defense’s main argument, that the charge against Aung San Suu Kyi is unlawful.
The charge against Aung San Suu Kyi cites a 1975 state security law, not the more narrowly defined confinement order for her house arrest.
The 1975 law sets out broader penalties and refers to the 1974 constitution, which was annulled when the military took power in 1988. The country adopted a new Constitution last year.
Meanwhile, an international media rights group urged Myanmar’s junta on Thursday to lift restrictions on coverage of the trial, saying the lack of transparency made a fair verdict unlikely.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said the military government had been “inconsistent” in its dealings with the media over the trial of the Nobel laureate inside Yangon’s Insein prison.
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