Lawyers for Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi said Tuesday they had asked a court to overturn an earlier ban that prevented three defence witnesses from testifying at her trial.  

Myanmar's military junta has charged the Nobel laureate with breaching the terms of her house arrest after an American man, John Yettaw, swam uninvited to her lakeside home in May, leaving her facing up to five years in jail.

Judges at the closed court in Yangon's Insein prison last month refused to allow three people including two members of her party to testify at the trial, in which final arguments are due Friday.

"We have filed a revision order to the court today... We want to call the other three witnesses," Kyi Win, her main laywer, told AFP.

"The prosecution had 14 witnesses and we had only one so far. If you look at the numbers it is one-sided, and that is why we have made this application," he added.

Nyan Win, the spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, said after going to court to file the application that it would be heard on Wednesday.

The three barred witnesses were Tin Oo, a journalist who was Myanmar's longest serving prisoner until his release in September; Win Tin, the detained deputy chief of her party, and lawyer Khin Moe Moe.

The only person to testify last week for the defence was a legal expert. "Tin Oo is a very important defence witness because he was a witness to the Depeyin incident," Kyi Win said, referring to a deadly attack on Aung San Suu  Kyi's motorcade by a pro-junta mob in May 2003.

Aung San Suu Kyi and Win Tin have both been detained ever since the attack.
Her legal team has questioned the basis of the laws under which she was held under house arrest for the past six years -- the detention order was lifted last week and argued that the charges against her are invalid.

She remains in prison awaiting the verdict. Kyi Win added that final arguments in the case could be delayed until after  Friday if the court agrees to hear their appeal to admit the extra witnesses.

Aung San Suu Kyi has spent 13 of the last 19 years in detention. Her party won Myanmar's last elections, in 1990, but the result was never honoured by the military, which has ruled the country since 1962.

The trial has drawn international condemnation but Myanmar's ruling generals say the case is an internal matter and have accused Aung San Suu Kyi of covering up Yettaw's visit.

One official even suggested that the American was a "secret agent or her boyfriend."

But Yettaw's lawyer Khin Maung Oo said earlier Tuesday that the former US military veteran did not take orders or money from outside organisations to carry out his bizarre intrusion into Aung San Suu Kyi's residence.

He said that Yettaw, a devout Mormon, was a "sincere and pious" person who believed God had told him to warn her and the government after he had a vision that she would be assassinated.

"There is no issue of him acting on someone's instruction to him or that some organisation provided money to him to do so," Khin Maung Oo said of his client, who also faces up to five years in jail.

Aung San Suu Kyi has testified that she allowed Yettaw to have "temporary shelter" for a night. She blamed the authorities for the intrusion, saying they failed to provide proper security.

South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak on Tuesday added to the pressure on the ruling junta, pressing Myanmar's Prime Minister Thein Sein at an Asian summit to "dispel international concerns" about its treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi.

US President Barack Obama has described the case as a "show trial" while the European Union has reiterated calls for her immediate release.

Source: AFP