BANGKOK: An Australian economist freed after more than 20 months imprisonment by Myanmar’s junta is in “amazingly good spirits,“ Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (pix) said on Thursday.
“I’ve just spoken to Sean Turnell, who has been released from 650 days of unfair, unjust imprisonment in Myanmar, and he has now landed and is well in Bangkok,“ Albanese told reporters at the APEC summit there.
Turnell, who was an adviser to the ousted government of Myanmar’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, was “in amazingly good spirits,“ Albanese said.
“He was making jokes. He is from my electorate and apologised for not voting at the election. I assured him he wouldn’t be fined.”
Turnell had saved the tote bags containing food hampers delivered to him by the Australian embassy, and would hang them over the bars of his cell, Albanese said.
This was so “he could see and the guards who were detaining him could see the Australian crest so that he could keep that optimism”.
“The Australian crest of course with the kangaroo and emu,“ Albanese added.
Turnell was working as an adviser to Suu Kyi when he was detained shortly after the coup in February last year.
The first foreign national known to have been arrested following the February 1 coup, Turnell was in the middle of a phone interview with the BBC when he was detained.
“I’ve just been detained at the moment, and perhaps charged with something, I don’t know what that would be, could be anything at all of course,“ he told the broadcaster at the time.
The exact details of his alleged offence have not been made public, although junta-controlled state television has said he had access to “secret state financial information” and had tried to flee the country.
In September, he and Suu Kyi were convicted by a closed junta court of breaching the official secrets act and jailed for three years each.
He will now travel on to Australia “to be with his family,“ Albanese said.-AFP
