Mizzima News

New Delhi (Mizzima) – The Rangoon divisional court on Friday accepted the request by Aung San Suu Kyi’s lawyers for an appeal on the conviction that has confined the Nobel Peace Laureate to a further 18 months.

Kyi Win, one of the lawyers of the Burmese pro-democracy leader, said the divisional court Judge Myint Aung, after hearing the arguments presented by him and his colleagues, accepted the request to appeal over Suu Kyi’s conviction last month.

“The judge has fixed September 18 for presenting our arguments. Both lawyers – prosecution and the defence – will be submitting their arguments,” Kyi Win added.

A Rangoon district court last month sentenced Burma’s democracy icon to three years with hard labour on charges of flouting her previous detention law by allowing an American, who swam across the Innya Lake, to stay in her house.

But the military junta supremo Snr Gen Than Shwe in an executive order commuted the sentence to half and allowed her to serve time at her home.

Suu Kyi’s legal team said, “Our argument is that she was charged and sentenced under the 1974 constitution, which is not effective any more. We believed she should be acquitted,” Kyi Win said.

The sentencing of the Burmese pro-democracy leader on August 11 had sparked international criticism and demands for her immediate release.

The General Secretary of the National League for Democracy, which won a landslide victory in the last election in 1990, has been under some form of detention for 14 of the past 19 years.