The Myanmar State Peace and Development Council Tuesday commuted Aung San Suu Kyi's sentence to 18-month confinement to her residence after a district court sentenced her three years' jail term for violating her terms of house arrest.
The commutation order was signed by SPDC Chairman Senior- General Than Shwe on Monday, according to Home Minister Major- General Maung Oo.
The remaining one and a half years' term out of the three years' sentence would be suspended for carrying out.
Over the period of suspension, Aung San Suu Kyi is set to stay at her Yangon lake-side residence, Maung Oo said, adding that if she abides by the rules prescribed for her, all the remaining terms could be exempted.
According to Tuesday's verdict of the court, Aung San Suu Kyi's two female housemates, Khin Khin Win and Win Ma Ma, were also sentenced to three years' prison term each but were each given one and a half years' commutation by the Myanmar SPDC chairman.
The remaining one a half years' terms set the two housemates to stay at home together with Aung San Suu Kyi.
According to the court verdict, the American citizen John William Yettaw was given a seven-year jail term.
Aung San Suu Kyi, 64, was convicted on charge of breaching "the Law to Safeguard the State Against the Dangers of Those Desiring to Cause Subversive Acts" by accommodating the American, John William Yettaw, who entered into her restricted lakeside house for three days from May 3 to 5.
Yettaw, who was hospitalized on Aug. 3 for suffering from epilepsy in the midst, was reportedly taken back to the court from the hospital Monday night to hear the sentence.
The trial on Aung San Suu Kyi and the other three started on May 18 at Yangon's Insein Prison.
Yettaw, 54, holding American passport and tourist visa, arrived in 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 Yangon lake-side house on May 3 night and left the house on May 5 night.
Yettaw was only arrested on May 6 dawn by Myanmar's security force while he was swimming back across Inya Lake out of Aung San Suu Kyi's house after three days' sneaking, according to the authorities.
Yettaw had also once swum across the Inya Lake and entered the barred residential compound of Aung San Suu Kyi on Nov. 30 last year.
Yettaw is a student of Clinical Psychology of Forest Institute attending Ph.D and a war veteran for two years.
Aung San Suu Kyi had been put under detention and later house arrest at her lake-side residence in Yangon for 14 years out of 20 from July 1989 to May 26, 2009.
She was so restricted under the authorities' four orders in respective terms -- "Restriction Order Against Her Fundamental Rights under Section-7 of the Law to Safeguard the State Against the Dangers of Those Desiring to Cause Subversive Acts", "Arrest Order under Section 10-A, "Prohibition Order under Section 10-B/11 " and "Continued Prohibition Order under Section 13/14".
(Xinhua News Agency August 11, 2009)
