YANGON, Myanmar – The Myanmar court scheduled to deliver a highly anticipated verdict Friday in the trial of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi adjourned until Aug. 11, saying it needed more time to consider relevant legal issues, lawyers said.

Suu Kyi rose to her feet after the judge's announcement, turned to foreign diplomats in the courtroom and said jokingly, "I apologize for giving you more work," a Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity, citing protocol. Journalists were not allowed inside.

The 64-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate is charged with violating the terms of her house arrest by harboring an American man who swam to her house uninvited. She faces up to five years in prison.

Her trial has drawn international condemnation since it opened May 18. Critics have accused the military government of using the bizarre incident as a pretext to keeping Suu Kyi behind bars through the country's planned elections next year.

Friday's hearing lasted only a few minutes.

"Judge Thun Nyunt said the trial is adjourned until Aug. 11 to consider some legal issues concerning the case," defense lawyer Nyan Win told reporters.

The judge did not elaborate, but Suu Kyi's lawyers were cautiously optimistic about the delay.

"The court has finally accepted that there is some misinterpretation of the law," Nyan Win said.

Suu Kyi's lawyers did not contest the basic facts of the case but argued that the law used by authorities against her is invalid because it applies to a constitution abolished two decades ago. They also say that government security guards stationed outside Suu Kyi's compound should be held responsible for any intrusion.

Also Friday, authorities in the military-ruled country briefly detained 10 members of Suu Kyi's opposition party, the National League for Democracy. They were arrested after praying for Suu Kyi at Yangon's famed Shwedagon Pagoda and released after several hours, Nyan Win said.

About a dozen other party members who were "closely following" Suu Kyi's trial were rounded up Thursday night in Yangon and remained in detention, he said.

Security was heightened Friday ahead of the expected verdict, with teams of riot police stationed nearby. All roads leading to Yangon's Insein prison — where the trial is being held in a court inside the compound — were blocked by barbed-wire barricades. Political protests are illegal in Myanmar.

Suu Kyi is charged with violating the terms of her lengthy house arrest when an American intruder swam across a lake and spent two nights at her home in May.

She is widely expected to be convicted, although there has been speculation she may stay under house arrest rather than serve time in jail. Suu Kyi has been in detention for 14 of the last 20 years, since leading a pro-democracy uprising in 1988 that was crushed by Myanmar's military junta.

Verdicts were also postponed for the uninvited American visitor, John Yettaw, 53, and two women who lived with Suu Kyi — Khin Khin Win and her daughter Win Ma Ma — and face charges similar to hers. Yettaw is charged as an abettor in violating her house arrest and faces up to five years in prison.

Yettaw, a devout Mormon from Missouri, walked around the courtroom after Friday's delay was announced.

"He said 'I love you' to everyone in the room," speaking mainly to his and Suu Kyi's lawyers, said Nyan Win.

Suu Kyi's party won national elections in 1990, but Myanmar's generals refused to relinquish power. Next year's promised elections will be the first in two decades.





A polar bear jumps into the water at Schoenbrunn zoo in Vienna. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

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