YANGON: Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi received a package from Britain's King Charles III on Monday, authorities said, releasing the first pictures of the detained Nobel laureate in two months and describing her as a "special female prisoner".
It is the first time Myanmar authorities have used the term to describe Suu Kyi, who was deposed in a military coup in 2021, triggering an ongoing civil war that has killed more than 100,000 people, according to monitoring group ACLED.
The coup leader and former junta chief Min Aung Hlaing was installed as civilian president in April following elections that did not include Suu Kyi's party. She was moved to house arrest soon afterwards.
Home ministry officials met her on Monday to deliver two books about soil, "one sealed envelope, and a sealed diplomatic communication sent by King Charles III of the United Kingdom to the special female detainee", Myanmar's presidential spokeswoman said on her Facebook page.
Britain is Myanmar's former colonial power, and the monarch is known to have a keen interest in gardening and the environment.
Accompanying the statement were two images of Suu Kyi meeting two men with their backs to the camera.
The pictures appeared to show a room similar to the one in the last released images of her, when she met a Red Cross representative in August — her first publicised meeting with a foreign official since her ouster.
AFP fact-checkers examined the latest photos and found no evidence of manipulation using Meta's generative AI or OpenAI tools.
Suu Kyi remains detained on charges that rights groups say were concocted to return power to the military, which has ruled Myanmar for much of its history since independence.
"I have been extremely lenient towards her," Min Aung Hlaing said in an interview with Time magazine published last month.
In response to questions from AFP, the Foreign Office in London did not say whether British diplomats had sought to deliver the package in person or had been refused permission to do so.
Britain condemns what it describes as Suu Kyi's "arbitrary detention" and calls for her immediate and unconditional release.
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