UPDATE - Myanmar arrests key suspect in Muslim lawyer’s killing

UPDATES WITH BACKGROUND ON AUNG WIN ZAW, COMMENTS BY ROBERT SAN AUNG

By Kyaw Ye Lynn

YANGON, Myanmar (AA)- Myanmar police have arrested a key suspect in connection with the assassination of a high-profile Muslim lawyer last Sunday, state-run media announced.

Aung Win Zaw, 46, was apprehended by police on Monday -- just one day after the assassination in the former capital Yangon -- while fleeing to the southeastern Karen state that borders neighboring Thailand, but the arrest was only announced Saturday.

Kyi Lin, a 53-year-old man from Mandalay who was arrested on Sunday for the assassination, confessed that Aung Win Zaw hired him to do the killing, said an announcement from the President’s Office published by state-run newspapers.

In exchange for the assassination, he was promised a car, Kyi Lin said after being arrested.

The victim of the assassination was Ko Ni, a legal advisor to the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD). Also chair of the Myanmar Muslim Lawyers Association, he was an expert on constitutional issues and helped the NLD prepare changes to the 2008 charter so it would no longer favor the military junta.

Though no motive for the killing has yet emerged, the government says the incident appears to be an attempt to destabilize the state.

- Former army officer

According to local media reports, Aung Win Zaw is a former army officer who served lengthy prison sentences in Obo Prison in the central Mandalay region for smuggling statues of the Buddha to neighboring countries.

Aung Soe, 51, a former fellow Obo inmate, told local media that he was approached by Aung Win Zaw last June to carry out an assassination.

“He asked me to kill a man of a different religion in broad daylight in downtown Yangon,” he was quoted as saying by the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) on Friday.

“He also told me that it would be good for our country, our race, and religion,” he said, adding that he declined the offer of around $100,000, weapons training, and a hiding place along the Myanmar-Thai border.

Robert San Aung, another prominent Muslim lawyer in Yangon, told Anadolu Agency that there must be a powerful person or a group of powerful people who want to destabilize the country.

“I don’t think Aung Win Zaw is the only man behind the killing,” he said in a telephone interview Saturday.

“There must be powerful people who mastermind the killing,” he said, speculating that they must come from a military background.

“Though I have no evidence, I do believe he was assassinated because of his efforts to get the Constitution changed,” San Aung said.

Ko Ni also publicly criticized the continuing role of the military in governing Myanmar even after the NLD party took over last March, and at the end of last year urged NLD lawmakers to speed up work for the charter change.