The former president and Nobel Peace Prize, arrested after the 2021 military coup, adds more than three decades in prison
The deposed leader of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, was sentenced this Friday to seven years in prison for five charges of corruption, according to the Reuters agency. The sentence thus put an end to a carousel of trials against the former leader, branded a “farce” by the international community.
In a closed-door trial, 77-year-old Suu Kyi, who was detained during a coup in February 2021, was found guilty of offenses related to renting and using a helicopter while she was the country’s de facto leader.
The prison sentence is in addition to the 26 years in prison already imposed on Suu Kyi, for crimes ranging from incitement to violence, breach of covid restrictions and illegal possession of radio equipment, to the violation of a law on state secrets, multiple charges of corruption and attempt to influence election officials. She has called them “absurd.”
Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for her decades-long campaign for democracy in Myanmar, the popular Oxford-educated Suu Kyi has spent much of her political life in detention under military governments. She led Myanmar, the official name for the former Burma, for five years beginning in 2015, after a decade of timid democracy that came after 49 years of military rule.
The Army, however, retook control of the country early last year to prevent Suu Kyi’s government from starting a second term, accusing it of ignoring irregularities in an election won by her party.
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