You probably thought that headline was an exaggeration. You were wrong.
If you haven't picked up Newsweek lately, this is the time to do it.
| Newsweek photo of John Yettaw stopped by authorities |
According to the Newsweek story:
The next word the family got regarding Yettaw came in a 5 a.m. phone call from the consulate at the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon. He had been arrested just past dawn on May 6, seized as he kicked through the soupy brown waters of Inya Lake, a man-made reservoir some four miles from his hotel. He had made an unauthorized and uninvited two-day visit to the weathered colonial-style home of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Prize-winning leader of Burma's pro-democracy movement. Suu Kyi says that she asked Yettaw to leave, but relented when he complained of hunger and exhaustion. "The Lady," as locals call her, trounced opponents in the country's last open election in 1990, but junta refused to recognize the results, and has kept her under arrest for 13 of the past 19 years for trying to unseat the regime. She was due to be released on May 27, ahead of next year's landmark national elections -- the first in two decades. But now Suu Kyi, the Oxford-educated daughter of Burmese revolutionary Aung San, faces five more years for violating the terms of her imprisonment and breaking the country's law forbidding unregistered guests from staying overnight.
Meanwhile, Yettaw is being held in Insein Prison and facing charges for "illegal swimming," among other things. He could be facing five years -- or more -- in prison if found guilty.
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