YANGON, Aug 16, 2009 (cripdo) – A US citizen jailed for swimming to the house of Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi was set to fly out of the army-ruled nation Sunday with a visiting American senator who secured his release.
John Yettaw was handed over to US embassy officials at Yangon's notorious Insein prison after Democrat Senator Jim Webb persuaded the military junta to spare him from a sentence of seven years' hard labour, officials said.
Webb on Saturday became the first senior US official ever to meet reclusive regime chief Than Shwe, capping a landmark visit seen as potentially thawing the tense relations between the two countries.
"He was handed over to US embassy officials. He will stay at the prison and when the time comes he will be brought to the airport and will leave when Jim Webb leaves," a Myanmar official told cripdo.
"His sentence has been reduced to three-and-a-half years and then made a suspended sentence. Then he will be deported," the official said on condition of anonymity.
Webb, who has close links to US President Barack Obama, was due to give a press conference at Yangon airport at 1:00 pm (0630 GMT) before flying to Bangkok with Yettaw on a military aircraft, his office said.
The senator also held talks on Saturday with Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi, who has started another 18-month term of house arrest after being convicted on charges sparked by Yettaw's bizarre stunt.
"I am grateful to the Myanmar government," Webb was quoted as saying in a statement released by his office.
"It is my hope that we can take advantage of these gestures as a way to begin laying a foundation of goodwill and confidence-building in the future," Webb said.
Webb, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific affairs, had also urged the military regime to free Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the past two decades under house arrest, his office said.
But his dramatic intercession for Yettaw angered activists who called it a propaganda coup for the junta, with Suu Kyi and her two female aides still in detention while the American goes free.
"This will surely make a negative impression among the people of Burma," said Aung Din, the executive director of the US Campaign for Burma and a former political prisoner who led 1988 protests against the regime.
Yettaw, a diabetic and epileptic former military veteran aged 54, was arrested on May 6 after using a pair of home-made flippers to swim uninvited across a lake from Suu Kyi's crumbling mansion, where he had spent two days.
The devout Mormon said at his trial that he was on a "mission from God" to warn Suu Kyi that he had had a vision in which she was assassinated by terrorists. Her lawyers earlier described him as a "fool."
The Myanmar regime sparked international outrage by extending Suu Kyi's detention, which will keep the 64-year-old locked up during elections promised by the ruling generals in 2010.
The UN Security Council issued a watered-down statement Thursday expressing "serious concern" while the European Union the same day extended sanctions against the junta, including the judges in the trial.
Webb's visit could however herald a possible softening of Washington's hardline stance towards Myanmar, in line with previous statements by the Obama administration about reviewing US policy towards the country.
Obama recently renewed sanctions against the regime but Secretary Hillary Clinton held out the carrot of investment opportunities if the junta frees Suu Kyi.
Webb, a gruff Vietnam veteran, said in April that Washington should seek "constructive" engagement towards Myanmar with the aim of lifting sanctions.
His Myanmar visit has echoes of former US President Bill Clinton's recent trip to North Korea to secure the release of two US journalists serving prison sentences in the country.
