Burma: Suu Kyi has six months of house arrest left
Burma's military rulers saw Aung San Suu Kyi has six months left of house arrest - File licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License
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Tuesday, 26, May 2009 05:39
Burma's military rulers have disputed the details of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's arrest, claiming her current term of detention has six months left to run.
Daw Suu Kyi is currently on trial over breaking the terms of her house arrest, which was due to expire tomorrow.
The Nobel peace prize laureate has been detained under Burma's state protection act for 13 of the last 19 years, but on Tuesday the junta said she had only been under house arrest for four and a half years, six months below the maximum of five years.
Appearing before a secret trial at Rangoon's notorious Insein prison, the 63-year-old denied charges that she violated her house arrest.
Daw Suu Kyi faces five years in jail if convicted of the charges, condemned by western governments as a ploy to keep her from public life.
She is accused of allowing American John Yettaw to stay at her house at the beginning of May.
The Missouri resident, 54, reportedly swam across a lake to reach Daw Suu Kyi after becoming convinced her life was in danger.
Daw Suu Kyi asked Mr Yettaw to leave but allowed him to stay on humanitarian grounds after he said he was too tired to swim back.
She told the court today that lax security had allowed him to reach her house.
"I didn't know about it immediately," she said. "I was informed about it at 05:00. My assistant told me that a man had arrived."
Daw Suu Kyi is the daughter of General Aung San, Burma's independence hero who was assassinated in 1947.
Her National League for Democracy party (NLD) won a landslide election victory in 1990 but she has never been permitted to take office by the country's military rulers.