A special court of the Myanmar authorities Monday started trial on Aung San Suu Kyi at Yangon's Insein Prison with a charge on her under Section 22 of the Law Safeguarding the State from the Dangers of Subversive Elements, the state-run Myanmar Radio and Television reported.
Aung San Suu Kyi, detained General Secretary of the National League Democracy (NLD), was charged with accommodating and speaking to an American named John William Yettaw, 53, who sneaked into her restricted house for three days from May 3 to 5.
Aung San Suu Kyi's two maids, Daw Khin Khin Win and Daw Win Ma Ma, as well as Yettaw totaling three were also under trial on charge of supporting her acts and the prior two for passing a book to Aung San Suu Kyi from Yettaw when he once sneaked similarly to her barred residence on Nov. 30 last year.
Moreover, Yettaw was also separately charged under Section 13/1 of the Immigration Emergency Acts for breaking immigration rule and Section 28 of the Yangon Municipal Acts for breaking the rule restricting swimming in the Inya Lake.
Aung San Suu Kyi was taken from her barred residence to Yangon' s Insein Prison on May 14.
Yettaw, 54, a U.S. citizen, was arrested on May 6 dawn by Myanmar's security force while he was swimming back out of Aung San Suu Kyi's Yangon lake-side house into which he had sneaked three days before.
Yettaw, holding American passport and tourist visa, arrived Yangon on May 2 and stayed at the Beauty Land Hotel-2. He swam through the Inya Lake and secretly entered Aung San Suu Kyi's house on May 3 night and left the house on May 5 night.
He was seized with a torch, a pair of folding pliers, a Cannon camera and some foreign and local currency notes among others.
Meanwhile, a United States consul official had been granted to have consular meeting with detained Yettaw on May 13 afternoon over the incident.
Yettaw, who is a student of Clinical Psychology of Forest Institute attending Ph.D, discharged duty as military serviceman for two years.
Aung San Suu Kyi, 63, was put under detention and later house arrest at her lake-side residence in Yangon for the third time since the Dabayin bloody incident in northwestern Sagaing division on May 30, 2003.
(Xinhua News Agency May 18, 2009)
