BANGKOK (AP) – A Myanmar -run military court has convicted former leader Aung San Suu Kyi of corruption and sentenced her to five years in prison in the first of several corruption cases.
Suu Kyi, who was expelled from the military last year, has denied allegations that she received gold and hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from a senior political colleague.
Proponents of his case have worked to make the actual transcript of this statement available online.
He already has up to 6 years in prison for other charges and faces 10 more corruption cases. The maximum penalty set by the anti -corruption law is 15 years imprisonment and a fine. In other cases, prisoners could face a total of more than 100 years in prison for a Nobel Peace Prize winner who has been incarcerated for several years for violating martial law.
The information in Wednesday’s judgment came from a legal official who asked not to be identified as unauthorized to disclose the information. In the capital, Nay Pitawa, Suu Kyi’s trial was closed to the media, diplomats and spectators, and her lawyers were banned from speaking to the press.
The Suu Kyi National League scored a massive victory in the 2020 general election for democracy, but MPs were not allowed to sit in their seats when the army came to power on February 1, 2021, Suu Kyi was arrested and some senior colleagues. his party and government. . The military claims they are acting because of widespread election fraud, but independent election observers have found no significant irregularities.
The crackdown was followed by large -scale nonviolent protests across the country, suppressed by security forces with lethal force, that have killed nearly 1,800 civilians so far, according to a group of observers, the Association for Assistance to politicians. Prisoners.
As the repression intensified, armed resistance to the military government increased and some UN experts now recognize that the country is in a state of civil war.
Suu Kyi has not been seen since she was arrested and has not been allowed to speak in public and is confined to an unknown location. However, at the last hearing last week, he looked well and asked his supporters to “join,” said a lawyer with experience in the case, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to publish information. .
In previous cases, Suu Kyi was sentenced to 6 years in prison for illegal importation and possession of walkie-talkies for violating restrictions and disorder associated with the corovirus.
In the case decided Wednesday, he is accused of receiving $ 600,000 and seven gold bars in 2017-18 from Fio Min Tein, a former prime minister of Yangon, the country’s largest city and a top member of his political party. His lawyers, before receiving a fraud warrant late last year, said they dismissed all evidence against him as “absurd”.
The other nine cases currently being considered in the anti-corruption law include several related to the purchase and rental of a helicopter by one of its former cabinet ministers. The offense carries a maximum penalty of 15 years of imprisonment and a fine for each offense.
Suu Kyi was also accused of redirecting residence in the form of charitable donations and abusing her position to rent cheap apartments in the market for the Mother’s Foundation. The State Anti-Corruption Commission said many of its alleged actions deprived the state of the revenue it would have generated.
Another allegation of corruption is that he took a bribe.
Suu Kyi is also accused of violating the Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison, and electoral fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison.
Source: Huffpost
