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US journo jailed for
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which has killed over 1,200 people according to a local monitoring group.
Danny Fenster, who had been working for local outlet Frontier Myanmar for around a year, was arrested in May as he tried to leave the country to see his family.
He was sentenced to 11 years for incitement, unlawful association and breaching visa rules, his lawyer Than Zaw Aung told AFP.
His client had not decided whether he would appeal, he added.
A junta spokesman did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.
Fenster, who has been held in Yangon’s Insein prison since he was detained, also faces charges of sedition and terrorism, which could see him jailed for life.
Ming Yu Hah, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for Campaigns said the ruling was “a reprehensible outcome in a case that has been deeply flawed from the start.”
The sentencing was based on evidence from the junta-appointed information ministry that showed at the time of his arrest Fenster had been working at local outlet, Myanmar Now, which had its licence revoked shortly after the coup, Than Zaw Aung said.
Fenster’s team were barred from cross-examining the ministry’s permanent secretary, he said, and the court did not consider tax evidence that Fenster had already left the outlet and was working for Frontier.
Crisis Group Myanmar senior advisor Richard Horsey 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 AFP.
He noted US diplomats were working to get him released.
“It will be resolved through diplomatic channels and hopefully very quickly,” he said.
“But obviously this sentence is a big setback to US efforts.”
The sentencing comes days after former US diplomat and hostage negotiator Bill Richardson met junta chief Min Aung Hlaing in the capital Naypyidaw, handing the increasingly isolated junta some rare publicity.
Richardson, declining to give further details, said the US State Department asked him not to raise Fenster’s case during his visit.
Myanmar has been mired in chaos since a February coup, with the military trying to crush widespread democracy protests and stamp out dissent.
More than 1,200 people have been killed by security forces, according to a local monitoring group.

SpaceX capsule with crew of four docks with ISS
Afp, Washington
A SpaceX capsule carrying four astronauts docked with the International Space Station on Thursday, kicking off a six-month stay on the orbiting outpost.
This mission known as Crew-3 is part of Nasa’s multibillion-dollar partnership with Elon Musk’s space company, signed after the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011 and aimed at restoring US capacity to carry out human spaceflight, rather than depend on Russia for links to the ISS.
The ISS had been operating with just one Nasa astronaut in the US segment to welcome the incoming crew, after the astronauts of the earlier Crew-2 mission splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday.
Crew-3’s Raja Chari, Kayla Barron and Tom Marshburn of the United States and Matthias Maurer of Germany traveled to space aboard a Crew Dragon capsule fixed to a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. They blasted off late Wednesday.
The spaceship, called Endurance, docked with the ISS around 7:10 pm Thursday (0010 GMT yesterday).
The flight was initially postponed from October 31, first for weather, then a “minor medical issue” affecting one of the crew. Nasa did not say who it was but said it was not Covid-related.
Chari, a US Air Force colonel, is commanding the mission and making his first trip to space, along with Barron and Maurer.
Marshburn, a medical doctor, flew aboard a Space Shuttle in 2009 and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in a mission from 2012-13.
Barron, who along with Chari was selected for the Nasa astronaut corps in 2017, the most recent recruitment, previously served as a submarine warfare officer for the Navy, while Maurer, a materials science engineer, is the 12th German to go into space.
The quartet will spend six months on the orbital outpost and conduct research to help inform future deep space exploration and benefit life on Earth.
Scientific highlights of the mission include an experiment to grow plants in space without soil or other growth media, and another to build optical fibers in microgravity, which prior research has suggested will be superior in quality to those made on Earth.
The Crew-3 astronauts will also conduct spacewalks to complete an upgrade of the station’s solar panels and will be present for two tourism missions, including Japanese visitors aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft at the end of the year and the Space-X Axiom crew, set for launch in February 2022.