Lawyers for Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi went to court Wednesday to challenge a ban preventing her from calling three out of four defence witnesses at her internationally condemned trial. The Nobel laureate's legal team said the refusal of judges to allow the witnesses to testify at the closed prison trial showed that the military regime's case against her was one-sided.

The opposition leader faces up to five years in jail on charges of breaching the conditions of her house arrest after a bizarre incident in which an American man, John Yettaw, swam to her lakeside home in May. The case has sparked international outrage, with US President Barack Obama calling the proceedings a "show trial".

 
"We will give our statement to the Yangon divisional court asking that they should accept our three defence witnesses," tells Nyan Win, one of her lawyers and also the spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD). "According to the law they should accept this revision."
 
Longest serving prisoner
The three barred witnesses were Tin Oo, a journalist who was Myanmar's longest serving prisoner until his release in September, detained deputy NLD chief Win Tin and lawyer Khin Moe Moe.
 
Nyan Win said that their preparations for final arguments in the case, which are due on Friday, were almost finished. Myanmar's ruling junta has kept Aung San Suu Kyi in detention for 13 of the last 19 years, and the latest attempt to lock her up has provoked international outrage. 
 
Window of opportunity
According to Tyler Giannini of Harvard Law School, has the case provided a "window of opportunity" to investigate Myanmar's junta. Giannini co-authored a report in May calling for the UN Security Council to follow the precedent of Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, where inquiries led to special tribunals and prosecutions.
 
"The trial of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is putting additional scrutiny on Burma right now and really highlighting the lack of judicial independence," Giannini said at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand late Tuesday. He said that with political unity there was a "very good chance to get that on thee UN agenda in the fairly near future because of this current scrutiny."
 
The Harvard report quoted UN documents as saying Myanmar's military regime has uprooted or destroyed more than 3,000 villages in the past 12 years, executed innocent people and practiced widespread sexual violence and torture.
 
David Mathieson, a Myanmar researcher for Human Rights Watch, supported the call for a UN inquiry in the country: "What this report is trying to say is that this is about justice, and justice should be served regardless of the outcome of Aung San Suu Kyi's trial, but it does provide an opportunity," he said at the event in Bangkok Tuesday.