A court on Wednesday sentenced ousted Mandalay chief minister Dr Zaw Myint Maung to four years in prison for alleged breaches of Covid-19 rules and for incitement.
The 69-year-old, who is also a vice chair of the National League for Democracy (NLD), has been detained at Mandalay’s Obo prison for 10 months and is suffering from leukemia.
Judge Htin Lin Ko gave him a two-year sentence under Myanmar’s disaster management law and one-year under a different section of the same law, but those sentences are to be served concurrently.
The charges related to the chief minister’s attendance of the opening ceremony of a Covid-19 awareness campaign in Mandalay two days before the February 1 coup.
He also received two years under Section 505b of the Penal Code for incitement, a charge related to several statements issued by the NLD condemning the junta.
A source familiar with the proceedings told Myanmar Now that Zaw Myint Maung would not have the days he had already spent in detention taken off of his sentence.
A Naypyitaw court trying detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi is due to decide next week whether to allow Zaw Myint Maung to testify on her behalf in one of her cases on charges of violating Covid-19 rules.
The request by Suu Kyi’s defence team has been rejected before on the grounds that Zaw Myint Maung is not in good health.
“Dr Zaw Myint Maung is ready to testify but we still don’t know if the prison will be able to arrange that,” said the source, who added that now he has been convicted, prison officials would be able to handle his attendance at the Naypyitaw court.
Ye Lwin, the ousted mayor of Mandalay, was sentenced to two years in prison at the same court hearing inside Obo prison on Wednesday, the source added. He was charged with incitement after he posted a photo of himself on Facebook giving the three-finger Hunger Games salute in opposition of the coup.
The court also gave two-year sentences on Wednesday to several other officials who attended the ceremony along with Zaw Myint Maung. They were: Zarni Aung, the regional energy minister, Dr Soe Thein, the minister of agriculture, and Tin Ko Ko, the secretary of the NLD’s Mandalay central executive committee.
The junta has filed five corruption charges against Zaw Myint Maung at the Mandalay regional court of justice that carry a sentence of up to 15 years, the source added. He also faces two voter fraud charges under the Penal Code.
Zaw Myint Maung spent almost two decades in prison after being jailed by the former junta in 199o, the same year he won a parliamentary seat for the NLD in an election later annulled by the military.
He was released in 2009 and elected as the MP representing Kyaukpadaung in the 2012 by-elections. He then won a seat as the MP representing Amarapura constituency No. 1 in 2015 and held the seat in last year’s election.
