Myanmar court postpones Suu Kyi verdict to Aug 11

A Myanmar court Friday postponed until Aug 11 its verdict on opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and three others charged with breaking the terms of her house arrest, officials said.

"The judges said they needed more time to review the laws," said a government official who attended the trial at a special court set up in Insein prison. The session lasted only 10 minutes.

Foreign diplomats, including representatives from the US, British and German embassies, attended the trial which was expected to issue a guilty verdict on Suu Kyi, 64.

She stands accused of breaking the terms of her house detention by allowing US national John William Yettaw to swim to her home-cum-prison May 3 and stay, albeit uninvited, in her compound until the night of May 5.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who has spent 14 of the past 20 years under house detention, faces a minimum of three years in jail and a maximum of five years if found guilty.

Suu Kyi's two housekeepers, Khin Khin Win and Win Ma Ma, face similar charges for accommodating Yettaw's surprise visit. Yettaw faces several months in jail for breaching various laws, including a prohibition against swimming in Inya Lake, on which Suu Kyi's family compound sits.

Security was tight around the prison, with roadblocks set up to prevent normal traffic flow. Myanmar's junta has issued a warning against any violent reaction to the outcome of the trial that began May 18.

According to still unconfirmed reports, authorities arrested several pro-democracy activists Thursday night.

Past court cases have demonstrated that Myanmar's judiciary has no independence from the country's ruling military junta, which wants Suu Kyi to remain out of politics until after a general election planned next year, observers said.

There was little hope that Suu Kyi would be found not guilty because her freedom might galvanise opposition to the government's scheduled general election in 2010 that promises to be neither free nor fair.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party won the last Myanmar election in 1990 by a landslide even though she was in jail at the time of the polls.

Analysts said Suu Kyi, deemed the only opposition politician the ruling regime fears and a democracy icon to her people, could seriously threaten the military's so-called political reforms, which it has dubbed a "seven-step roadmap" to democracy.

Given this political reality, even Suu Kyi was not optimistic about the outcome of her trial.

"Daw (Mrs) Aung San Suu Kyi is prepared for the worst," her attorney Nyan Win said Tuesday after the court's final hearing.

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