**Lawyers for Burma’s pro-democracy opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, say a court has accepted to hear their appeal against her latest sentence.**Legal representatives say an appeal against her extended house arrest will be heard in Rangoon on 18 September.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s detention was extended by 18 months after she was convicted of breaching security laws.
Ms Suu Kyi has spent 14 of the last 20 years in detention. The latest sentence has drawn international condemnation.
“It is the right decision to accept the case. We appeal for the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” said Nyan Win, the spokesman for Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy.
Daw is a Burmese term of respect for a woman.
Last month a court sentenced the opposition leader to a further 18 months for violating the terms of her detention, by allowing an uninvited US man into her home.
The American, John Yettaw, was given a seven-year sentence but freed at the intervention of a visiting US senator.
Ms Suu Kyi’s extended house arrest means she cannot take part in elections next year.
‘Constitutional clause’
Ms Suu Kyi’s legal team argued at her trial that she was not guilty and that the law she was being tried under had been superseded by a new constitution approved in a controversial referendum last year.
Just days ago her chief lawyer, Kyi Win said: “Altogether there are 11 reasons for the appeal, but the main thing we will point out is about the constitution.”
Her conviction was “not in accordance with the law”, he added.
Appeals have also been filed on behalf of two of the opposition leader’s companions, who were convicted on similar charges, her lawyers added.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won the last elections in 1990 but was never allowed to take power.