US convicts Burmese national in conspiracy to attack Myanmar envoy to UN

A Burmese national who took part in a plot to attack Myanmar’s permanent representative to the United Nations has been convicted in the United States of conspiracy to assault a foreign official.

Phyo Hein Htut is scheduled to be sentenced on March 14, 2024, after being found guilty at the end of an eight-day trial, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said in a statement on July 24. He faces up to five years in prison. 

Phyo Hein Htut, who lives in New York, had volunteered to be on a security team for Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun. But he was secretly feeding information about the ambassador, the mission and personnel to an arms dealer in Thailand who sold weapons to the Myanmar military as part of a plot to harm the ambassador, according to the statement. 

Kyaw Moe Tun has been a key critic of Myanmar’s junta, which seized control of the Southeast Asia country from the elected civilian-led government in a February 2021 military coup. 

He was appointed to his post before the coup. The junta has demanded that he step down as ambassador, but he has refused to do so.

From about February 2021 through early August, Phyo Hein Htut conspired to injure or kill the ambassador by accepting money from the arms dealer sent to him to hire attackers in an attempt to force the ambassador to step down from his post, the statement said.

“The fact that they tried to assassinate the courageous Myanmar ambassador who stood up for the people at the United Nations was the lack of rule of law and violence has reached outside of Myanmar to the U.S.,” said Kyaw Zaw, spokesman for the President’s Office of Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government. 

Billy Ford, a program officer for the Burma team at the U.S. Institute of Peace, said the incident was a “clear indication that the Myanmar military is a criminal organization willing to do anything to sustain its power – even attempting to assassinate a sitting U.N. ambassador.”

“Since it illegally took power more than two years ago, the military has repeatedly committed crimes and atrocities, including air strikes on civilians and this assassination attempt, with impunity,” he said.  

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, told Radio Free Asia that the evidence against Phyo Hein Htut was overwhelming enough to result in a unanimous jury verdict against him. 

“His heinous efforts to organize an attack on U.S. soil against the U.N. ambassador deserves the maximum possible punishment as a deterrent to others who would think about undertaking such actions,” he said.

On Aug. 6, 2021, U.S. authorities revealed the plot to kill or injure the ambassador after they arrested a security volunteer, Phyo Hein Htut, 28, and Ye Hein Zaw, 20, who is said to have been an intermediary who sent money from an arms dealer in Thailand to bankroll the attack.

Authorities charged Htut and another Burmese national, Ye Hein Zaw, with conspiracy to assault and make a violent attack upon a foreign official.

Ye Hein Zaw pleaded guilty for his role in the conspiracy in White Plains Federal Court in New York state, RFA reported in December 2021.

This report was produced by Radio Free Asia (RFA), a news service affiliated with BenarNews.