A court in military-ruled Myanmar has found former leader Aung San Suu Kyi guilty of corruption, the latest verdict in a series of secret trials.
Ms Suu Kyi has been under house arrest since February 2021 when a military coup ousted her elected government.
The 76-year-old Nobel laureate has been charged with a raft of criminal offences including voter fraud. She denies all of the accusations and rights groups have condemned the court trials as a sham. The closed-door hearings in the capital Nay Pyi Taw have been shut to the public and media, and Ms Suu Kyi’s lawyers forbidden from speaking to journalists.
On Wednesday a junta court found her guilty of taking a $600,000 (£477,000) bribe in the form of cash and gold bars from the former head of Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city and region.
She was sentenced to five years in jail. Lawyers told the BBC they had not been able to meet her yet. The latest conviction takes her total prison sentence to 11 years, as she was previously found guilty for other offences. Ms Suu Kyi still faces 10 other corruption charges, each carrying a maximum penalty of 15 years, as well as charges on electoral fraud and violating the official secrets act.
Credit: bbc.com
