US journalist Danny Fenster sentenced to 11 years in prison in Myanmar Military news

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The director of Frontier magazine has accused him of several crimes, including promotion, sedition and “terrorism”.

Danny Fenster, a journalist for Myanmar’s Frontier magazine, has been jailed for 11 years by a military court in the country.

The 37-year-old man was arrested at Yangon airport in May and found guilty of three charges, his employer said in a statement.

Fronter said the decision was announced outside Yangon’s Insein prison on Friday morning after a closed trial of the press and the public, and after sentences of “the harshest possible” under the law.

The charges against Fenster were linked to an allegation that he was working for online news outlets, Myanmar Now, which he left in June last year.

Fenster joined Frontier in July 2020, where he is managing editor. Frontier noted that the court rejected key evidence, including tax records, that confirmed Fenster’s work in the news magazine.

“There is no basis to convict Danny of these allegations,” Frontier editor Thomas Kean wrote in a statement on Twitter. “His legal team clearly proved to the court that he had resigned from Myanmar Now and had been working for Frontier since mid-last year. Everyone at Frontier is disappointed and frustrated with this decision.”

Former U.S. diplomat and hostage negotiator Bill Richardson has met with coup general Min Aung Hlaing and the prosecutor has targeted the verdict with additional charges of “terrorism” and sedition.

The military arrested on February 1 elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other high-ranking officials taking power on their own. The move sparked mass protests and a civil disobedience movement, and generals have responded by force, killing more than 1,000 people and imprisoning thousands, according to the Political Prisoners Support Association.

Phil Robertson, Asia’s deputy director of Human Rights Watch, said the court’s decision was “horrible”.

“(() The charges against him are false and false, he has not committed a crime!” Robertson wrote on Twitter.

Since the coup, the military has also imposed blackouts on the Internet, shut down satellite TV and cracked down on independent media, removing licenses from several Myanmar news outlets.

In June, two journalists — one from Mizzima and one from DVB — were jailed by generals for revising the spread of “fake news” under a colonial-era law.