BANGKOK -- Myanmar's military on Tuesday sentenced seven personnel to 10 years in prison and hard labour as alleged accomplices in the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslims in troubled Rakhine state, where the country's security forces carried out a brutal crackdown against the minority group, officials said. The authorities told Reuters in February the military opened an internal investigation independently and that it is unrelated to the Reuters reporters who are accused of obtaining unrelated secret government papers. The bloody incident in Inn Din village on 2 September is the only atrocity to which the military has admitted during its violent crackdown in northern Rakhine state, which has forced some 700,000 Rohingya to flee over the border into Bangladesh since August last year. The military called it a "clearance operation" against the terrorists, but the U.S. and the United Nations branded it an "ethnic cleansing" after the army's operation drove nearly 700,000 Rohingya into neighbouring Bangladesh. "For the military personnel under the Military Act 71, four military personnel and three soldiers will be sentenced to 10 years in prison with hard labour and to be permanently expelled from the army," the statement said. Myanmar's security forces launched brutal counterattacks against Rohingya Muslims after a Rohingya insurgent group attacked police outposts on Aug. 25. Buddhist villagers attacked some of them with swords and soldiers shot the others dead, the military had said. Their report, based on testimony from Buddhist villagers, security officers and relatives of the slain men, described how Myanmar troops and Buddhist villagers executed the 10 men before dumping their bodies into a mass grave.
A prosecutor asks the International Criminal Court to decide if it has jurisdiction over Rohingya deportations from Myanmar to Bangladesh, saying they may constitute a crime against humanity.