BANGKOK -- American journalist Danny Fenster, who spent nearly six months in jail in military-ruled Burma and was sentenced last week to 11 years of hard labor, was freed Monday and began his journey home.
Fenster was handed over to former U.S. diplomat Bill Richardson, who helped negotiate the release, and the two landed in Doha, Qatar.
"I'm feeling all right physically," a bearded Fenster, in baggy drawstring pants and a knit hat, said on the tarmac in comments carried by the Al Jazeera network. "The longer it drags on, the more worried you are that it's just never going to end. So that was the biggest concern, just staying sane through that."
While still jailed, Fenster told his lawyer that he believed he had covid-19, though prison authorities denied that.
Fenster, the managing editor of online magazine Frontier Myanmar, was convicted Friday of spreading false or inflammatory information, contacting illegal organizations and violating visa regulations. Days before his conviction, he learned he had been charged with additional violations of terrorism and treason statutes that put him at risk of an even longer sentence of life in prison.
He is one of more than 100 journalists, media officials or publishers who have been detained since the military ousted in February the elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and his was the harshest sentence yet.
Burma is often called Myanmar, a name that military authorities adopted in 1989. Some nations, such as the United States and Britain, have refused to adopt the name change.
"This is the day that you hope will come when you do this work," Richardson, a former governor of New Mexico and past ambassador to the United Nations, said in a statement emailed by his office. "We are so grateful that Danny will finally be able to reconnect with his loved ones, who have been advocating for him all this time, against immense odds."
Fenster has been in detention since he was arrested on May 24 at Yangon International Airport as he was headed to the Detroit area to see his family.
"We are overjoyed that Danny has been released and is on his way home -- we cannot wait to hold him in our arms," his family said in a statement. "We are tremendously grateful to all the people who have helped secure his release, especially Ambassador Richardson, as well as our friends and the public who have expressed their support and stood by our sides as we endured these long and difficult months."
The exact allegations against Fenster were never clear, but much of the prosecution's case appeared to hinge on proving that he was employed by another online news site that was ordered closed this year during a crackdown on the media after the military's seizure of power. Fenster used to work for the site but left that job last year.
According to the U.N., at least 126 journalists, media officials or publishers have been detained by the military since the takeover and 47 remain in custody, though not all of them have been charged.
In a statement broadcast on state TV, the military said Fenster had been released at the request of Richardson and the chairman of the Japan-Myanmar Friendship Association. Japan, unlike the United States and the European Union, does not take a publicly confrontational stance with the military-installed government, and would like to see improved relations between Burma and the West.
The generals in Burma "were convinced that it wasn't worth it to hang on to Danny," U.S. Rep. Andy Levin of Michigan, who represents the Fenster family in Congress, told Detroit radio station WWJ. "He was innocent, and he was just an annoyance for them. If they kept him and anything really happened to him, we would never forget it. We would never forgive them."
Information for this article was contributed by Jon Gambrell of The Associated Press.