Myanmar executes NLD lawmaker, 3 other political detainees

BANGKOK (AP) — Myanmar has carried out its first executions in nearly 50 years with the hangings of a former National League for Democracy lawmaker, a democracy activist and two men accused of violence after the country's military takeover last year.

The executions announced Monday were carried out despite worldwide pleas for clemency for the four political detainees.

The Mirror Daily state newspaper said the four planned, directed and organized "the violent and inhuman accomplice acts of terrorist killings.”

The paper said they were hanged according to prison procedures but did not say when the executions occurred.

Phyo Zeya Thaw, a 41-year-old former lawmaker from ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party also known as Maung Kyaw, was convicted in January by a closed military court of offenses involving explosives, bombings and financing terrorism.

He had been arrested last November based on information from people detained for shooting security personnel, state media said at the time. He was also accused of being a key figure in a network that carried out what the military described as terrorist attacks in Yangon, the country’s biggest city.

Phyo Zeya Thaw had been a hip-hop musician before becoming a member of the Generation Wave political movement formed in 2007. He was jailed in 2008 under a previous military government after being accused of illegal association and possession of foreign currency.

Also executed was Kyaw Min Yu, a 53-year-old democracy activist better known as Ko Jimmy, for violating the counterterrorism law. Kyaw Min Yu was one of the leaders of the 88 Generation Students Group, veterans of a failed 1988 popular uprising against military rule.

He already had spent more than a dozen years behind bars for political activism before his arrest in...