BANGKOK — Lawyers for the jailed pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi were scheduled to present closing arguments Friday in a trial that could send her to prison for five years.
Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, 64, is charged with violating the terms of her long house arrest after an American intruder swam across a lake and spent two nights in her villa in early May. She has been held in a prison residence since her arrest May 14.
Defense lawyers concede the facts of the case — that the man, John Yettaw, entered and stayed in her home — but they say Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi did not break any laws. They also say the government’s security guards at her compound should be held responsible for the intrusion.
The trial has drawn sharp criticism from abroad, most recently this week at a meeting of regional foreign ministers in Phuket, Thailand, where Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton demanded the release of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been held under house arrest for 14 of the last 19 years.
Mrs. Clinton said her release “would open up opportunities at least for my country to expand our relationship with Burma, including investments in Burma,” the former name of Myanmar.
Mrs. Clinton has said in the past that the United States is reassessing its longstanding policy of diplomatic and economic sanctions against the country’s ruling junta.
But the arrest of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi set back any moves toward improved relations. The day after the arrest, President Barack Obama extended for one year a ban on American investment in Myanmar, a sanction that was first imposed in 1997 in response to the repression of Myanmar’s political opposition.
In the trial, which began May 18, Mr. Yettaw, of Falcon, Missouri, faces up to six years in prison for immigration violations and for violating municipal sanitation codes by swimming the lake.
Also on trial are two women who keep house for Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi. They have been her only companions throughout her most recent six-year term of house arrest.
Mrs. Clinton also called on the ruling generals to hold “open and credible elections next year,” a reference to plans for a parliamentary ballot that many analysts say is designed to formalize military rule of Myanmar.
The country has been under the rule of a military junta since shortly after a pro-democracy uprising in 1988 in which hundreds of peaceful protesters were massacred.
In 1990 Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, won an overwhelming victory in a parliamentary election but the ruling generals annulled the result.
Many analysts believe the arrest of Mrs. Aung San Suu in May was intended as a pretext to extend her house arrest, which was due to expire that month, to keep her from participating in next year’s election.
“We admire Aung San Suu Kyi,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We think that the sacrifices she has made for her people, the people of Burma, are admirable and really demonstrate that one person can make a difference.”
She added: “Yes, we would like to see her released.”
In a tart retort Friday, the government-controlled newspaper The New Light of Myanmar said demands for the release of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi showed “a reckless disregard for the law.”
“The government has said many times that there are no political prisoners in Myanmar,” the paper said, only people who have been convicted of criminal acts.
“Daw Suu Kyi, like them, is not a political prisoner,” it said, “but a person who is on trial for breaching an existing law.”
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