Burma's top court rejected a final and largely symbolic appeal by detained Nobel peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi against her house arrest, her lawyer said today, two days before her scheduled release.
The Burmese supreme court decision was widely expected and has little bearing on the expiry of Ms Suu Kyi's house arrest term on Saturday, when a sentence imposed last year for the violation of a security law is due to end.
Ms Suu Kyi, detained for 15 of the past 21 years, has voiced opposition to a parliamentary election held last Sunday and easily won, as expected, by a party set up by the military. She has called on her loyalists to expose electoral fraud.
"The special appeal at the supreme court was the last resort," said lawyer Nyan Win, who is also a spokesman for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) which was officially disbanded this year after deciding not to contest the election.
"However, I still believe she will be released on or before Saturday when her house arrest term expires. There is not any law to extend her house arrest," he added.
But he said there had been no advance notice that the military junta would agree to release the 65-year-old pro-democracy leader, who led the NLD to a landslide victory in the last election in 1990, a result ignored by the military.
Ms Suu Kyi was sentenced to house arrest in August last year for allowing an American intruder to stay at her home in contravention of security rules. The intruder, John Yettaw, said God had sent him to warn her she would be the target of an assassination plot.
There has been speculation that the regime, rather than honour a pledge to release her on Saturday, would find another reason to keep her detained to ensure a smooth transition for the government that will emerge from the election.
Ms Suu Kyi, daughter of the leader of the former Burma's campaign for independence from British rule, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.
Reuters