Myanmar’s military junta on Friday sentenced former British ambassador Vicky Bowman and her husband to a year in prison, a UK Foreign Office source with knowledge of the matter told CNN.   

  The couple were arrested in Yangon last month after authorities charged them with violating immigration laws.  Myanmar military authorities claimed that the address Bauman had listed on her visa did not match her residence.  Violations of Myanmar’s immigration law carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison.   

  Bowman’s conviction follows the British government’s announcement last month of a new round of sanctions targeting businesses linked to Myanmar’s junta, which took power in a bloody coup in February 2021.   

  Her sentencing came on the same day Myanmar’s ousted former leader Aung San Suu Kyi was found guilty of election fraud and sentenced to three years in prison with hard labour.   

  Bowman served as Britain’s top diplomat in the Southeast Asian nation from 2002 to 2006. After completing her ambassadorship, Bowman remained in the country as the founder of the non-governmental organization Myanmar Center for Responsible Business.   

  Bowman and her husband Htein Lin, a Myanmar national, were arrested by authorities last month.   

  Htein Lin is a prominent artist and former political prisoner who spent six and a half years behind bars for his role in the student uprisings against the old military junta in 1998. He was released in 2004.   

  A UK Foreign Office spokesman told CNN the government “will continue to support Ms Bowman and her family until their case is resolved”.   

  Ming Yu Hah, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for East and Southeast Asia Campaigns, condemned the news in a statement, calling the decision “extremely worrying”.   

  “The latest reports of the sentencing of the former UK ambassador and her Burmese artist husband are extremely disturbing.  The Myanmar military has a notorious record of arresting and imprisoning people on politically motivated or false charges,” said Yu Hah.   

  Meanwhile, Friday’s verdict against Suu Kyi is the latest in a string of punishments handed down to the 77-year-old and means she now faces up to 20 years in prison.   

  However, this is the first time Suu Kyi – a figurehead of the opposition to decades of military rule in the country – has been sentenced to hard labor since last year’s coup.   

  Friday’s trial concerned the November 2020 general election that her National League for Democracy won in a landslide, defeating a party created by the military.  Three months after those elections, the military seized power to prevent Suu Kyi’s party from forming a government, alleging electoral fraud.   

  Suu Kyi and her party deny these claims and say they won the election fairly.   

  Human rights groups have repeatedly raised concerns about the punishment of pro-democracy activists in the country since the coup.  In July, the junta executed two prominent pro-democracy activists and two other men accused of terrorism, after a trial condemned by the UN and rights groups.