A court in junta-ruled Myanmar agreed Friday to hear an appeal by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi against her conviction for sheltering an American man who swam to her home, her lawyer said. The Nobel laureate was sentenced to 18 more months under house arrest on August 11, after being found guilty of breaching security laws following the incident in May involving eccentric US national John Yettaw.
"The court agreed to hear the appeal. Both sides, the government and ourselves, have to give our arguments on September 18," her main lawyer Kyi Win said after an initial hearing at Yangon divisional court. Suu Kyi's defence team had lodged the appeal with the court on Thursday but the judges could have refused to consider the case. "It is the right decision to accept the case. We appeal for the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi," said Nyan Win, the spokesman for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy.
The original verdict sparked international outrage and the imposition of further sanctions against Myanmar's ruling generals, who have already kept the 64-year-old dissident locked up for 14 of the past 20 years. Critics have accused the military regime of using the charges against Suu Kyi as an excuse to keep her locked up during elections due to be held next year.
Suu Kyi had insisted on her innocence during the trial held at Yangon's notorious Insein Prison, saying that she allowed former military veteran Yettaw to stay for two nights at her home because he was ill. Yettaw was sentenced to seven years' hard labour for the stunt in early May but was freed after a visit by US senator Jim Webb last month, on what the regime said were compassionate grounds because of health problems.
Suu Kyi was originally sentenced by the court to three years of "rigorous imprisonment," but in a carefully staged last-minute intervention, junta leader Than Shwe commuted the sentence to a year and a half under house arrest. Kyi Win said the appeal would focus on the fact that a 1974 constitution under which the junta had detained Suu Kyi had been superseded by a new constitution that was approved in a controversial referendum last year.