Reuters Staff
YANGON (Reuters) - A police officer who said he was part
of the team that detained two Reuters reporters in Myanmar in December told a
court on Wednesday that he was not familiar with police procedures for
recording arrests.
Second Lieutenant Myo Ko Ko was the latest prosecution
witness to give evidence in proceedings to decide whether reporters Wa Lone, 31,
and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, should be charged under Myanmar’s colonial-era Official
Secrets Act.
Defense lawyer Khin Maung Zaw told reporters after the
hearing that Myo Ko Ko had conceded during cross-examination that he was not
familiar with procedural rules in Myanmar’s police manual. “So he cannot be a
reliable witness for the prosecution,” Khin Maung Zaw said.
GRAPHIC – here http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/MYANMAR-JOURNALIST-PROFILE/0100602S055/index.html
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were arrested on Dec. 12 for
allegedly obtaining confidential documents, after they had been invited to meet
police officers over dinner in Yangon.
The pair have told relatives they were arrested almost
immediately after being handed some papers at a restaurant by two officers they
had not met before.
Asked about the location where the arrests took place,
Myo Ko Ko said it was on a street lined by factories. That contradicted a map
previously produced by police and entered in the court file, which showed
stores and tea shops, but no factories.
Myo Ko Ko told the court he was part of the arresting
team, but did not see the documents police have said the two reporters were
holding in their hands.
At a previous hearing, police Major Min Thant had agreed
during cross-examination that the information in the documents that Wa Lone and
Kyaw Soe Oo were holding had already been published in newspaper reports.
Earlier in Wednesday’s proceedings the prosecution had
opposed a defense request that the police station logbook in which the arrests
had been recorded should be shown to the court as evidence, arguing that it was
still in daily use and could not leave the police station.
Judge Ye Lwin
refused the defense’s request, saying the defense did not have the right to see
the record at this stage of the proceedings.
MASS
GRAVE REPORT
The two reporters
had been working on a Reuters investigation into the killing of 10 Rohingya
Muslim men who were buried in a mass grave in northern Rakhine state after
being hacked to death or shot by ethnic Rakhine Buddhist neighbors and
soldiers.
After Reuters
published its report on the killings on Feb. 8, calls have mounted for the
release of the two reporters.
The United States
said at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that Myanmar had “the
gall to blame the media” for the situation in Rakhine and demanded that the
reporters be freed.
“For the crime of
reporting the truth, the Burmese (Myanmar) government arrested and imprisoned
the reporters,” said Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
“Unhindered media access is vitally important. Journalists like the two
imprisoned Reuters reporters are an indispensable source of information.”
Britain, France, the
Netherlands and Kazakhstan also called at the meeting for the release of the
reporters.
Myanmar U.N.
Ambassador Hau Do Suan said Myanmar recognizes freedom of the press and the
journalists were not arrested for reporting a story, but were accused of
“illegally possessing confidential government documents”.
Nearly 690,000
Rohingya have fled Rakhine and taken refuge in neighboring Bangladesh since the
Myanmar military launched a crackdown on insurgents at the end of August,
according to the United Nations.
The United Nations
has said the military campaign against the Rohingya may amount to genocide.
Myanmar says its security forces mounted legitimate counter-insurgency
clearance operations. The next hearing at the Insein District Court in Yangon
was set for Feb. 21.
Reporting by Myanmar
bureau; Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Editing by Alex Richardson