Myanmar Supreme Court rejects opposition leader's appeal - Summary

Thu, 11 Nov 2010

Yangon - Myanmar's Supreme Court on Thursday rejected an appeal by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi against her latest detention, increasing the likelihood of her release this weekend, sources said.

Chief Justice Aung Toe rejected Suu Kyi's appeal in the military government's capital, Naypyitaw.

Suu Kyi had appealed a sentence of 18 months of house detention handed down by a criminal court in July last year for breaking the terms of her previous incarceration by allowing an uninvited US national to swim to her lakeside home-cum-prison in Yangon.

The sentence was due to expire Saturday because it began on May 13, 2009, when she was last arrested.

"With this court ruling, it is more likely that she will be released on Saturday," said a government official, who asked to remain anonymous.

Observers reasoned that if the court had accepted the appeal case, it would have dragged on, keeping Suu Kyi under house arrest for the duration.

Others were expecting the court to charge Suu Kyi, 65, with contempt and impose another detention period on her.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) opposition party, has spent 15 of the past 20 years under house arrest.

"I think she will be released unconditionally, but we won't get the order until the last minute," the government official said.

Myanmar's junta chief Senior General Than Shwe is the only person empowered to order Suu Kyi's release.

NLD spokesman Nyan Win said Suu Kyi would never accept conditions to her release, and was expected to hold a press conference immediately if freed.

The international community has been calling for Suu Kyi's release either before or after the country's first election in 20 years, held Sunday.

The proxy party of the junta, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), was expecting to win by a landslide at the polls, which have been widely condemned for being neither free nor fair.

In Yangon, Naypyitaw and Mon State, the USDP won 141 of the 182 contested seats, or 77 per cent. The National Democratic Force (NDF), a breakaway faction of the NLD, won 12 seats in the three areas, or 6.5 per cent.

The final results have yet to be announced.

There have been widespread complaints against the USDP of vote-buying and tampering with advance votes to secure its victory.

"The regime may feel they can deflect international condemnation of the election by releasing Suu Kyi," said Win Min, a Myanmar political scientist in Bangkok.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/353056,leaders-appeal-summary.html.