New York:
An American journalist jailed for six months by Myanmar’s military rulers returned to the United States on Tuesday, a day after he was pardoned and released from prison.
“It feels unbelievable,” said Danny Fenster hugging his parents after landing at New York’s JFK airport at around 8am (1300 GMT).
Fenster, 37, went to see former US diplomat Bill Richardson, who helped facilitate his release.
Looking thin and unshaven after his ordeal in captivity, Fenster said his return home has been “a long time coming.”
“It was a moment that I had imagined so intensely for a long time,” he told reporters. It surpassed all I imagined. “
Fenster was sentenced to 11 years in prison last week for incitement, unlawful association and violation of visa rules.
He was freed on Monday, a day before he faced charges of terrorism and drug use that could land him in jail for life, and flown to Doha.
Myanmar’s military has clamped down on the press since taking power in a February coup, arresting dozens of journalists critical of a crackdown that has killed more than 1,200 people, according to a local monitoring group.
Fenster worked at Frontier Myanmar, a local shop in the Southeast Asian country, for about a year and was arrested when he returned home to meet his family in May.
Authorities said Fenster had been pardoned and released on “humanitarian grounds”, ending 176 days in a colonial-era prison that housed many of Myanmar’s most prominent dissidents.
His release was secured following “face-to-face negotiations” between Richardson and police chief Min Aung Hlaing.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from the syndication feed.)
