Bangkok Post : Burma's Suu Kyi to hear appeal result in October

A Burma court will rule next month on Aung San Suu Kyi's appeal against her extended house arrest, lawyers said Friday, as the junta released several activists amid growing foreign pressure.

A Burma national holds a portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi during a demonstration in front of the Burma Embassy in Tokyo. A Burma court will rule next month on Aung San Suu Kyi's appeal against her extended house arrest, lawyers said, as the junta released several activists amid growing foreign pressure.

Judges will announce on October 2 whether they will uphold the pro-democracy icon's conviction over an incident in which an American man swam to her house, earning her an extra 18 months detention.

The 64-year-old Nobel Peace laureate was denied permission to attend court on Friday as government and defence lawyers gave their final arguments in the appeal against the internationally condemned verdict.

"We are expecting her unconditional release," Suu Kyi's lawyer Nyan Win said after the hearing at Rangoon divisional court, confirming that it would hand down its judgment on October 2 at 10am (0430 GMT).

Burma's iron-fisted generals have kept the frail Suu Kyi locked up for 14 of the past 20 years. Her National League for Democracy (NLD) won the country's last elections in 1990 but the regime refused to acknowledge the result.

Her extended house arrest now keeps her off the scene for elections promised by the regime some time in 2010, adding to widespread criticism that the polls are a sham designed to legitimise the junta's grip on power.

The trial court at Rangoon's notorious Insein prison originally sentenced her to three years of hard labour but junta chief Than Shwe reduced the sentence to 18 months of house arrest.

Two female assistants living with Suu Kyi received the same sentence and have also appealed.

John Yettaw, the eccentric American who triggered the debacle by swimming to her lakeside mansion in May, was sentenced to seven years hard labour but the regime freed him last month following a visit by US Senator Jim Webb.

On Thursday the junta freed two journalists who helped victims of devastating Cyclone Nargis in 2008. Authorities also released several NLD activists as part of an amnesty for more than 7,000 prisoners.

One of the freed journalists was Eint Khaing Oo, 28, who earlier this year became the first recipient of an award set up in memory of a Japanese video reporter who was killed in monk-led protests in Burma in 2007.

"I am happy that I am free. I will continue working as a journalist," Eint Khaing Oo, who worked for the Burma-based journal Ecovision, told reporters after she was released from Insein Prison.

The other journalist was Kyaw Kyaw Thant, who was arrested at the same time as her after they took a group of survivors of the May 2008 cyclone to the United Nations head offices in Rangoon.

Both were mentioned in a Human Rights Watch report published on Wednesday which said that the number of political prisoners in Burma had doubled to more than 2,200 in the two years since the protest crackdown.

Nargis killed around 138,000 people and left thousands more homeless after battering southwestern Burma. The military regime's slow response to the disaster drew international criticism.

Also freed on Friday was leading NLD member Nine Nine, who won a seat in the 1990 elections. He was serving a 21-year sentence and had been in jail since September 2000.

"I will continue to be a politician," said Nine Nine. "I will join the NLD again because I will always be an NLD member."

Another leading member of the NLD, Than Than Htay, was also freed.

Burma's director general of prisons, Zaw Win, said the regime had announced the amnesty as it was the 21st anniversary of a military coup that followed the crushing of a 1988 student-led pro-democracy uprising.

He said that the prisoners were freed so they could take part next year's polls.

"The government will hold the elections in 2010 so we have released them to take part in the elections according to the rights of the citizens," he told reporters.