Mon 20 December 2021:
According to a source familiar with the case, Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial for illegally importing and possessing walkie talkies was postponed on Monday by a Myanmar junta court.
Since the generals staged a coup against her government on February 1, ending the Southeast Asian country’s brief period of democracy, the Nobel laureate has been detained.
According to a local monitoring group, nationwide protests against the putsch have resulted in a bloody crackdown, with over 1,300 people killed and over 11,000 arrested.
Suu Kyi, 76, was set to hear the verdict on charges of illegally importing and possessing walkie-talkies, the latest in a string of junta court rulings that could land her in prison for the rest of her life.
The judge, however, adjourned the case until December 27 without explanation, according to an AFP source familiar with the case.
Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the Junta, later commuted the sentence to two years and said she would serve it under house arrest in the capital, Naypyidaw.
If found guilty of the walkie-talkie charges, Suu Kyi could have faced three years in prison. The charges stem from a raid on her home in the early hours of the coup, when soldiers and police allegedly discovered her in possession of the contraband equipment.
According to a source familiar with the case, members of the raiding party admitted under cross-examination that they did not have a search warrant for the raid.
Suu Kyi is also accused of multiple counts of corruption, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison, as well as violating the Official Secrets Act.
Journalists are not allowed to attend the special court hearings in Naypyidaw, and her lawyers have recently been prohibited from speaking to the media.
Suu Kyi spent her long periods of house arrest under a previous junta at her family’s colonial-era mansion in Yangon, where she would appear in front of tens of thousands of people on the other side of her garden fence.
Min Aung Hlaing has been confined to an undisclosed location in the capital, with her only contact with the outside world being brief pre-trial meetings with her lawyers.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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