Suu Kyi goes free after family row ends in court

The Burmese Nobel peace laureate and pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, narrowly avoided being jailed yesterday after being convicted of an offence relating to a family dispute.

Suu Kyi, who was released from house arrest last year by the military junta, was found guilty of unlawfully keeping her cousin, Soe Aung, out of a residential compound that they shared in Rangoon, the capital. She was sentenced to a week in prison but was allowed to go home after the judge suspended the sentence.

Her opposition National League of Democracy (NLD) party accused Burma's military rulers of exploiting the domestic dispute for political gain. The NLD chairman, Aung Shwe, said the conduct and outcome of the trial showed there had been political interference. "This judgment and the trial are politically motivated," he said.

Relations between Suu Kyi and the regime remain strained despite the generals bowing to international pressure and granting her freedom after 19 months under house arrest. United Nations-mediated talks between the military and the opposition have stalled and hopes of reform have receded.

The altercation that led to the court case took place shortly after Suu Kyi, the widow of an Oxford don, was released last May. Soe Aung allegedly punched her in the face during a row about alterations that he had made to the family property while she was in detention.

She sued him for assault and refused to allow him to enter the compound. Her lawyer, Nyan Win, said she wanted to avoid further incidents and steer clear of confrontations between her cousin and her security guards, members of the NLD's youth wing. Soe Aung counter-sued, charging her with "unlawful restraint of a person".

Suu Kyi has been embroiled for several years in a separate dispute about the property, which was given to her mother by the government after her father, the independence hero General Aung San, was assassinated in 1947. Her estranged older brother, Aung San Oo, is suing her for half-ownership of the property, where she spent her childhood and has lived since returning to Burma in 1988.

The court in Bahan township, near Suu Kyi's home, ordered her to go to jail or pay a fine of 500 kyat, equivalent to about £50. She refused and her lawyers lodged an appeal to have the ruling revised.

That process usually takes days but shortly afterwards the Western Yangon District Court – a higher court with authority over the township – announced that the sentence was suspended. The court said it would make a final ruling later.

Outside court, Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel peace prize in 1991 for her non-violent efforts to promote democracy, criticised the country's legal system. "Now we know what the law means in Myanmar [Burma]," she said.

The NLD won a landslide victory at the latest general election in 1990, but the military refused to hand over power. Before the recent period of house arrest, Suu Kyi spent six years detained in a two-storey lakeside property in Rangoon, where she was held without trial on national security charges.

The gulf between the opposition and the military appears to be widening, with the generals railing earlier this month against threats to the country's stability. Suu Kyi told supporters recently that Burma's society and economy, ruined by mismanagement and isolation, were suffering because the government was refusing to conduct a meaningful dialogue.