Myanmar court to hear Suu Kyi appeal on Oct 29

A Burmese activist lights candles on a cake in front of a portrait of Myanmar's detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi during an event celebrating her birthday in Bucheon, west of Seoul June 20, 2010.

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's Supreme Court will hear an appeal lodged by detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi against her house arrest on Oct. 29, one of her lawyers said on Thursday.

The appeal by Suu Kyi, figurehead of the fight against military rule in the Southeast Asian country, will be heard in the capital, Naypyitaw, by a panel of five judges, lawyer Kyi Win told Reuters.

She is due to be released on Nov. 13, six days after the country's first election in two decades.

She was sentenced to house arrest in August last year for allowing an American intruder to stay at her home in contravention of security rules.

The intruder, John Yettaw, said God had sent him to warn her she would be the target of an assassination plot.

Speculation has been rife that the regime, rather than honour a pledge to release her, would find another reason to detain her in November to ensure a smooth transition for the government that will emerge from the election.

Suu Kyi, daughter of the leader of the former Burma's campaign for independence from British rule, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, a year after her party swept Myanmar's last parliamentary election. The military ignored the result.

She has spent 15 of the past 21 years in detention, most of it under house arrest in Yangon.

(Reporting by Aung Hla Tun; Writing by Alan Raybould; Editing by Robert Birsel)