US journalist Fenster freed from Myanmar jail
Monday, 15 November 2021
American journalist Danny Fenster is out of prison in Myanmar, his employer said on Monday, just three days after he was sentenced to 11 years in jail for incitement and breaches of immigration and terrorism laws.
"Great news. I heard @DannyFenster is out," Sonny Swe, the publisher of Frontier Myanmar, Fenster's employer, said on Twitter. He did not provide details.
Another source at the online magazine confirmed the same information, reports Reuters.
The circumstances around his release were not immediately clear.
Fenster's family, the US embassy in Yangon, and a spokesman for Myanmar's ruling military council did not immediately respond to separate requests for comment.
Fenster, 37, is managing editor of online magazine Frontier Myanmar and was arrested in May while trying to leave Myanmar, a country in chaos since a Feb 1 military coup.
He was the first Western journalist sentenced to prison in recent years in Myanmar, where the coup against the elected government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi ended a decade of tentative steps towards democracy and triggered nationwide protests.
The military has arrested dozens of journalists among thousands detained after protests erupted nationwide.