Vicki BowmanBANGKOK Sep 2 Former British Ambassador to Myanmar Vicki Bowman, head of the British Mission in the country in 2002 — 2006, was sentenced on Friday by a Yangon city court to a year in prison on charges of violating the visa regime, which manifested itself in the fact that the ex-diplomat did not live at the place of registration, the Myanmar opposition portal Myanmar Now reports. Together with Bowman on her husband, a Myanmar citizen, artist and well-known student activist of the late 1980s, Thein Lin, was also sentenced to a year in prison, who was accused of violating the visa regime as his wife's accomplice, the report said. The violation was expressed in the fact that Bowman and her husband lived for a long time not in their family home in Myanmar's largest city of Yangon, where Bowman was registered, but in Thein Lina's house in the Shan State of Myanmar near the Thai border, the report says. on which the verdict was passed, took place in the courtroom, which is located on the inner territory of the Yangon central prison «Insein», in which the couple ended up immediately after their arrest. Having left for England in 2006, in 2013 the couple returned to Myanmar, where Bowman headed non-governmental organization «Center for Responsible Business», of which he still remains the director.
