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YANGON: Lawyers for Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi pressed the military-ruled nation's top court Wednesday to overturn a ban on two key witnesses at her controversial trial, her party said.
The Nobel Peace laureate faces up to five years in jail on charges of breaching the terms of her house arrest after a bizarre incident in which an American man swam uninvited to her lakeside home in May.
A court at Yangon's Insein prison last month barred two top members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) from giving evidence, but the Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal against the decision.
"Both sides have to give their arguments to the Supreme Court today. Our argument is that the decision of the lower court was not in accordance with the law," NLD spokesman and defence lawyer Nyan Win said.
The two barred witnesses are Win Tin, a journalist who was Myanmar's longest-serving political prisoner until his release in September, and detained deputy NLD leader Tin Oo.
Aung San Suu Kyi's lawyers earlier this month successfully appealed against a ban on a third witness, while a fourth has already testified.
The prosecution has so far had 14 witnesses, adding to opposition and international claims that the proceedings are a show trial designed to keep the democracy icon locked up ahead of elections scheduled by the government in 2010.
US national John Yettaw and Aung San Suu Kyi's two live-in aides are also on trial and face a similar sentence.
Aung San Suu Kyi has spent 13 of the last 19 years in detention since Myanmar's ruling government refused to recognise the NLD's landslide victory in the country's last democratic polls in 1990.
The UN envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, may visit the country later this week ahead of a possible trip by the world body's chief Ban Ki-moon in early July focusing on the trial, officials and diplomats say.
"We hope to meet Mr Gambari when he comes, as we did on his previous visits," Nyan Win said.
The charges against Aung San Suu Kyi come amid a wide-ranging crackdown on the opposition that has been carried out since the ruling generals crushed protests led by Buddhist monks in 2007.
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has been ruled by the military since 1962.
- AFP/yt
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