An American jailed and later freed by Myanmar’s military junta for swimming to the home of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi said on Thursday he “wept every day” while in prison.
John Yettaw was sentenced to seven years’ hard labor for swimming to Aung San Suu Kyi’s home in May using a pair of homemade flippers, but he was freed after a visit by Democratic Senator Jim Webb earlier this month.
The bizarre incident, which led some to allege Yettaw, a devout Mormon from Falcon, Missouri, was mentally ill, caused Aung San Suu Kyi to be placed under house arrest for a further 18 months, meaning she will be not be free for elections promised by the ruling junta for next year.
“Little did I know they were going to arrest her and put her on trial,” Yettaw told CNN in his first broadcast interview since he was freed, insisting he was perfectly sane. “I wept every day, I suffered every day.”
Yettaw, who plans to write a book about the ordeal, said his motives were purely humanitarian and prompted by visions that Myanmar’s generals “were going to murder her.”
“I had a premonition. I’m going to free a political prisoner in Burma,” the retired bus driver and Vietnam War veteran said. “It’s about stopping the killings. And that’s what it was from day one ... This has been her message of peace.”
Yettaw said his interest in Aung San Suu Kyi began in Thailand.
“I had seen her photograph for the first time. And I instantly had a premonition or a vision that I was — I saw myself going through a lake and over a fence in the — and was at the back door of a house,” he said.
He then searched the Internet for information about the democracy icon and discovered “she lived next to the lake. And I got a passport or a visa, rather to get in. And I thought, since this has been presented to me, I’m going to make it happen.”
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