Myanmar’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s jail term was reduced from four years to two, state television announced on Monday. The Nobel Price laurate, earlier in the day, was  convicted on charges widely dismissed as politically motivated. 

However, hours later a TV reports said that Myanmar’s military leader cut her and President Win Myint, convicted alongside her, sentence in half. The reductions were part of an amnesty.

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MRTV reported that the sentences would be applied “at their current detention places,” apparently meaning they would not be sent to prison. It’s not clear where Suu Kyi has been held but she has not described it as a prison.

Aung San Suu Kyi is the civilian leader of Myanmar who was ousted in a de facto coup this year. Her four-year sentence was widely criticised by world bodies including the United Nations. 

Monday’s verdict was the first in a series of cases brought against 76-year-old Suu Kyi since her arrest on February 1, the day the army seized power and prevented her National League for Democracy party starting a second term in office.

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If found guilty of all the charges she faces, Suu Kyi could be sentenced to more than 100 years in prison. She is being held by the military at an unknown location, and the court did not make clear Monday whether she would be moved to a prison or kept under some form of house arrest, according to a legal official, who relayed the verdict to The Associated Press and who insisted on anonymity for fear of being punished by the authorities.

The army seized power claiming massive voting fraud in the November 2020 election, which Suu Kyi’s party won in a landslide. Independent election observers did not detect any major irregularities.

Opposition to the takeover sprang up almost immiedately and remains strong, with armed resistance spreading after the military’s violent crackdown on peaceful protests. The verdict could inflame tensions even further.

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The cases against Suu Kyi are widely seen as contrived to discredit her and keep her from running in the next election since the constitution bars anyone sent to prison after being convicted of a crime from holding high office or becoming a lawmaker.

Yanghee Lee, the former U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar, described the charges as well as the verdict as “bogus,” while U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet call the procedings a “sham trial.”

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Rights groups also deplored the verdict, with Amnesty International calling it “the latest example of the military’s determination to eliminate all opposition and suffocate freedoms in Myanmar.”

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said the trial was just the beginning of a process that “will most likely ensure that Suu Kyi is never allowed to be a free woman again.”

With inputs from the Associated Press