Burma opposition leader Suu Kyi faces trial after visit by uninvited American
Opposition activists believe that Burma's junta, which has held Suu Kyi in detention for 13 out of the past 20 years, is looking for a legal pretext to keep her longer. Her current arrest order is due to expire at the end of this month, Bloomberg reports.
Suu Kyi has been detained since May 2003 under a law that allows someone deemed a threat to national security to be held without charge, according to [Jared] Genser, president of the U.S.-based Freedom Now group. The junta says it can detain her under the law for six years, or until May 27, and is now looking for another means to deny Suu Kyi her freedom, he added.
Agence France-Presse says that Burmese officials have described Mr. Yettaw as a Vietnam War veteran. A US diplomat was allowed to meet him on Wednesday.
The state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper said that Yettaw had confessed to arriving in Yangon on a tourist visa on May 2. He then swam to the compound the following night "and secretly entered the house and stayed there."
Myanmar official sources said the man had succeeded in meeting Aung San Suu Kyi during his time at the house before he was arrested in the early hours of May 6 while swimming back across the lake.
The newspaper said authorities confiscated his passport and a black haversack, torch, folding pliers, a camera, two US 100-dollar bills and some Myanmar currency notes.
