To the gallows
Duo sentenced to death over the killing of Suu Kyi’s aide.
YANGoN:
A court in Myanmar sentenced two men to death for the killing of a prominent Muslim lawyer who was a close adviser to top leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
The Yangon Northern District Court found the gunman, Kyi Lin, guilty of premeditated murder and illegal weapons possession for the shooting of Ko Ni in broad daylight.
An accomplice involved in planning the killing was also sentenced to death, and two other men involved in the crime received prison sentences.
A fifth suspect thought to be the crime’s mastermind remains at large.
Ko Ni was shot in the head at close range on Jan 29, 2017, as he walked out of the airport after returning from a working trip to Indonesia. Closed-circuit television footage showed he was shot near a taxi stand as he held his five-yearold grandchild.
Onlookers chased down the gunman, catching him only after he also shot dead a taxi driver who was one of his pursuers. An ex-convict previously imprisoned for illegally trading in antiquities such as sculptures of Buddha, Kyi Lin also received a 20-year sentence for killing the taxi driver.
The failure to apprehend the crime’s alleged mastermind left many questions about the motivation for the killing, especially with the defendants offering contradictory testimony.
Speculation about the reasons Ko Ni was targeted focused on two possibilities.
Ko Ni was noted for criticising army interference in politics and advised Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy on ways to get around articles in the army-imposed constitution that give the military wide powers even after Myanmar’s transition to democracy.
The fact that two of the defendants are former army officers fuelled theories that the military was involved with the crime, an accusation it denies.
As a prominent advocate for the Muslim minority in overwhelmingly Buddhist Myanmar, Ko Ni was also a target of abuse from ultra-nationalist Buddhist monks and their allies, some of whom publicly gloated after his death.