American journalist Danny Fenster was on his way home on Monday, hours after being released from six months’ imprisonment in Myanmar, where he was sentenced last week to 11 more years behind bars.
Fenster, wearing a knit cap, a shaggy beard and sandals, said he felt “great” after landing in Doha, Qatar on a chartered flight, just three days after being handed the brutal sentence following a sham trial.
He had been convicted on charges of spreading false or inflammatory information, contacting illegal organisations and violating visa regulations.
Fenster was pardoned and deported, a day before he was due to face additional ‘terror’ and sedition charges that could have jailed him for life.
“I’m just really happy to be on my way home,” he told reporters in Doha, accompanied by former United States ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson, who had negotiated his release.
Fenster, who was working as the managing editor of Frontier Myanmar, an online magazine, had been arrested in May as he tried to board a flight from Yangon to the US city of Detroit. He is one of dozens of local journalists that have been detained since a military coup in February.
According to Frontier, Fenster had earlier worked for Myanmar Now, an independent news site that has been critical of the military since the coup.
The arrest came amid a crackdown by Myanmar’s military, which seized control of the country in February, prompting mass protests and civil disobedience.
To date, at least 1,265 people have been killed in the country and more than 10,000 have been detained, arrested, charged or sentenced in a crackdown on dissent, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).
“At long last: Danny is coming home. This nightmare is finally over for Danny’s family, friends and loved ones,” said Senator Gary Peters, who represents Fenster’s home state of Michigan. “Danny was doing incredible work telling the stories of the Burmese people – and his unjust detention was an attack on the freedom of the press.”
Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, told the BBC that the verdict was “a travesty of justice by a kangaroo court” intended to intimidate all remaining journalists working inside Myanmar.
Meanwhile, Richard Horsey, a senior adviser at Crisis Group Myanmar, described the sentence as “outrageous”.
“It sends a message not only to international journalists… but also Myanmar journalists that reporting factually on the situation is liable to get them many many years in prison,” he told the AFP news agency.
He added that US diplomats were working to secure Fenster’s release but noted that “obviously this sentence is a big setback to US efforts.”
Myanmar’s military leaders seized power in February after suffering a massive election defeat at the hands of the ruling National League of Democracy.
It claimed it had no choice but to orchestrate the coup because of widespread fraud in the poll, despite the country’s election commission saying there was no evidence to support these claims.
News of the coup sparked off large-scale civilian demonstrations across the country, which the military dispersed with brutal force.
Around 80 local journalists are known to have been detained for their reporting so far. According to the AAPP, 50 of them are still in detention and half have been prosecuted.