YANGON (AFP) - Military-ruled Myanmar freed several prominent opposition party figures as part of a mass prisoner release one month after a power struggle ousted the country's premier.
Several members of the opposition National League for Democracy said Win Tin, a former NLD top executive and confidante to detained party leader Aung San Suu Kyi, was among those freed, but uncertainty swirled over his fate as others said he remained at Yangon's Insein prison as of late Friday.
NLD central executive committee member Than Tun said Win Tin was released along with female provincial MP Mey Win Myint, and expected more political prisoners, especially those who were ailing or elderly, to be freed.
Win Tin, 74 and in ill health, has spent the last 15 years behind bars, with several international human rights groups and the United Nations demanding his release.
"Political party members appeared to be released singly and driven away in cars to their homes," an NLD member told AFP outside the gates of Insein prison, where hundreds of people including 100 NLD members had gathered to welcome freed comrades.
"We saw at least four persons including Win Tin being driven away in cars," the member said.
But the man who authorities have allowed to meet with Win Tin during his time in jail said that while the award-winning writer was "on the list to be released", there was no evidence he had been freed.
"I went to see him today but I was not allowed to go in," said the source who requested anonymity. "I will be seeing him there tomorrow."
Party spokesman U Lwin said he could not confirm the release either.
"All of this has been something of a surprise to us," U Lwin said.
Win Tin was arrested in July 1989 during a crackdown on the pro-democracy movement, after civil unrest which had erupted the year before was brutally suppressed.
Also freed were NLD MPs Kyaw San, Ohn Maung, Toe Bo and Aung Zin, an NLD source said, while MP Khun Sai was said to have been released from Shwebo prison in central Myanmar.
Diplomats and observers praised the move as the first gesture of openness by the reclusive regime that last month dismissed its pragmatist prime minister Khin Nyunt in favour of a hardline general.
"It is an overture to the international community which has become more and more stern" in its approach to the junta, which has come under withering criticism from international quarters, a Western diplomat said.
He stressed however that it was "not possible" that Aung San Suu Kyi or her NLD deputy Tin Oo would be among those freed in the move.
Hundreds of detainees were seen by an AFP correspondent filing out of Insein prison as part of the release of 3,937 inmates ordered Thursday by the junta, which said they may have been wrongfully jailed by a military intelligence unit disbanded in the wake of the political shakeup.
A freed female prisoner told AFP there were some 1,000 inmates marked for freedom Friday. "More will be coming out," she said.
The government has thrown scores of NLD members into detention, including Aung San Suu Kyi and Tin Oo, since May last year when their convoy was attacked by a junta-backed mob in northern Myanmar.
State radio said the detainees were being freed from jails throughout the country, but the lack of detail or mention of who the prisoners were left many guessing as to the junta's motives for the largest prison release in years.
One Yangon-based observer dismissed the release as a ploy to ease widespread international condemnation of the dismissal of prime minister Khin Nyunt and his replacement by a hardline general.
"These are damage-control measures taken by the military hierarchy to negate some of the negative developments here," the observer said.
For years Khin Nyunt had headed the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB), which gave officers loyal to him widespread powers. It was abolished shortly after Khin Nyunt was purged, and state media reported Thursday that the convicts were released in light of "irregularities" committed by the NIB.
Amnesty International in its 2004 report said more than 1,350 political prisoners remained imprisoned in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.
The military has ruled Myanmar since 1962 despite the NLD winning a landslide election in 1990.

11/19/2004 - 12:45 GMT - AFP