Myanmar - Yettaw released

US man convicted in Myanmar deported, handed over to US senator

Article published on the 2009-08-16 Latest update 2009-08-16 08:59 TU

US Senator Jim Webb (L) with Than Swe in Naypyidaw, 15 August 2009
(Photo: Office of Senator Jim Webb/Handout, via Reuters)

The US man who was sentenced to seven years’ of hard labour in Myanmar for swimming to the home of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in May flew out of the country Sunday, accompanied by US senator Jim Webb, who negotiated his release. John Yettaw was turned over to US embassy officials at the Insein prison. Suu Kyi remains under house arrest.

"I express my thanks to the government of Myanmar,” said Webb, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific affairs, at the airport before boarding a plane headed to Bangkok, Thailand.

"I am not going to apologise for the actions that [Yettaw] took but I believe that it was a good gesture from your government to our country to allow him to return home to his family for humanitarian reasons.”

Officials in Myanmar said Yettaw was being officially deported, and that his sentence had been reduced from seven to three-and-a-half years, and then suspended.

Webb secured Yettaw’s release through talks with the head of Myanmar’s military junta, Than Shwe. Some have criticised his intervention because Suu Kyi was not freed, despite his call for the junta to do so.

In the same trial that convicted Yettaw, Suu Kyi was sentenced to another 18 months of house arrest, effectively keeping her from participating in elections promised in 2010.

She has spent the past two decades under house arrest.