Fenster was convicted last week to a handful of charges in Myanmar and then sentenced to 11 years of hard labor.
American journalist Danny Fenster arrived back in the U.S. Tuesday and reunited with his family after spending nearly six months in a Myanmar jail. Fenster, the managing editor of the online magazine Frontier Myanmar, was convicted last week of spreading false or inflammatory information, contacting illegal organizations and violating visa regulations. He was then sentenced to 11 years of hard labor in Myanmar until Bill Richardson, a former U.S. diplomat and past ambassador to the United Nations, helped negotiate his release, the Associated Press reported. Fenster, now sporting shaggy hair and a beard, said after landing in New York that it was a « long time coming, a moment I had been imagining so intensely for so long. » Richardson, who served as governor of New Mexico, said that it « feels great to get Danny back home. It’s worth the effort, worth everything we did. » When Fenster exited a car outside an airport hotel Tuesday, his mother, brother and father rushed over to hug him. Fenster’s release came as his prospects for freedom were looking increasingly dim. Just days before he was convicted, he was hit with two extra criminal charges of terrorism and treason in addition to the three he already faced. The military government said that Fenster was « pardoned » and then released on « humanitarian grounds, » BBC reported.
