By
Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi pleaded not guilty at her trial on Friday and blamed the regime’s lax security for allowing an American intruder to swim uninvited to her lakeside home, her lawyers said.

The closed court in Yangon’s notorious Insein Central Prison formally charged the Nobel laureate, her two female housemates and the U.S. man after five days of hearings that have sparked international outrage.

“Are you guilty?,” the presiding judge, U Thaung Nyunt, asked the 63-year-old Suu Kyi.

“No, because I did not commit any crime,” she calmly replied, according to her lawyer Nyan Win.

Suu Kyi faces up to five years in jail if found guilty of breaking the terms of her house arrest by allowing the American, John Yettaw, to stay in her home for two days in early May.

She told her lawyers on Friday she was responsible for allowing him to stay on humanitarian grounds. She had asked him to leave, but Yettaw said he was too exhausted.

Suu Kyi blamed the regime for lax security at her home, where she has spent most of the past six years under police guard, with her phone line cut and visitors restricted.

“If the security had been proper, he would not have got here,” Suu Kyi later told her lawyers.

The court formally charged Suu Kyi and her two female housemates for violating her house arrest under a draconian security law.

Yettaw pleaded not guilty to breaking the same law, immigration violations and a charge of illegal swimming.

“I am not guilty because I had a dream about the assassination of Aung San Suu Kyi and I came to warn her,” Yettaw was quoted as telling the judge.

When the judge asked the 53-year-old American why he had swum to Suu Kyi’s home, he replied: “I swam there because I could not walk on water.”

Friday’s hearing took a bizarre turn when Yettaw rose to his feet, turned away from the judge and told the courtroom: “She is innocent. She is not guilty.” He then sat down.

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Critics have denounced the trial as a ploy to keep Suu Kyi, the charismatic National League for Democracy (NLD) leader, in detention until after 2010 elections. The West derides the polls as a sham to entrench nearly a half century of military rule.

On the video, the Missouri resident said he had left his family behind, “believed God was with him” and admired Suu Kyi and “did not blame her for not allowing him to take her photos.”

It is unclear when the trial will end. The prosecution was halfway through its list of 22 witnesses, most police officials, when Thursday’s hearing ended.

Most Myanmar watchers say Suu Kyi is almost certain to face a guilty verdict, which could come before her latest spell of house arrest is due to expire on May 27 after six years.

(Writing by Darren Schuettler; Editing by Alan Raybould and Jerry Norton)