After more than five months of detention in Burma, the American journalist Danny Fenster has been released.
He will be expelled from the country shortly, a Burmese government source told AFP on Monday (November 15th).
Danny Fenster "is taken" to the capital Naypyidaw from Yangon where he was imprisoned and will be deported, the source added.
"It is certain that he is released, but we have not contacted him and can not say anything for the moment", however qualified Sonny Swe, the editor of Frontier Myanmar, the magazine for which he works. .
The 37-year-old journalist was arrested last May while trying to leave the country.
He had since been held in Insein prison near Rangoon.
Last week, he was sentenced to 11 years in prison for incitement against the army and illegal association.
He was scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday for terrorism and sedition, and for doing so faced life imprisonment.
Muzzled press
Burma has sunk into chaos since the February 1 military coup, which ended a ten-year democratic parenthesis.
The regime continues a bloody crackdown on its opponents with more than 1,200 civilians killed and more than 7,000 others in detention, according to the Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners (AAPP).
This local NGO reports cases of torture, rape and extrajudicial executions.
The press is muzzled by the junta, which tries to strengthen its control of information, limiting access to the Internet and canceling media licenses.
More than 100 journalists have been arrested since the putsch, according to Reporting Asean, an association for the defense of rights, which points out that 31 of them are still in detention.
With AFP
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