Myanmar court hears arguments of jailed Reuters reporters
Reuters reporters
A Myanmar court heard arguments on Mondayin the appeal of two Reuters reporters sentenced to seven years in jail on charges of breaking the Official Secrets Act.
Lawyers lodged an appeal on Monday to free two Reuters journalists jailed for their reporting on Myanmar's Rohingya crisis, decrying the sentence as a "mistake" that has already resulted in the pair being locked up for a year.
Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, were arrested in December 2017 and later sent to prison for what prosecutors said was a breach of official secrets law for the possession of classified material on security operations.
Reuters disputed the charge and said the two were set up by police after probing the massacre of 10 Rohingya Muslims during a military crackdown.
Lawyers for the reporters filed an appeal against the conviction in early November, citing evidence of a police set-up and lack of proof of a crime.
Lawyers for the reporters and the prosecution presented arguments for more than an hour on Monday before the hearing was adjourned. The court did not give a date for a decision.
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Appeal lawyer L. Khun Ring Pan, asked the judge, Aung Naing, to overturn the lower court's decision and release the reporters.
Their conviction in September sparked widespread global condemnation, including from US Vice President Mike Pence, who asked civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi to intervene.
"This seven-year jail sentence is a mistake," the journalists' lawyer L.Khun Ring Pan told the bench, in a hearing attended by embassy officials and free media advocates as well as the wives of the jailed journalists.
"They were trying to find out who was involved with the (Inn Din) case. That's why they tried to meet the police... they did not ask for anything secret."
Before their arrest, the reporters had been working on a Reuters investigation into the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men and boys by security forces and Buddhist civilians in western Myanmar's Rakhine State during an army crackdown that began in August last year.
The operation sent more than 730,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh, according to UN estimates.