BANGKOK, Thailand - It was one of the more bizarre episodes in her extraordinary life, but Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi must have thought she was seeing things when she saw a wet-bedraggled American emerging exhausted onto her veranda.

Myanmar citizens living in Japan hold portraits of Aung San Suu Kyi as they shout slogans during a rally.

John Yettaw had swum across Inya Lake – a picturesque body of water that the military Junta thought was also part of an impenetrable ring of defences around Aung San Suu Kyi’s mansion. Her crumbling, but grand colonial-era house has has been her prison cell for much of the last two decades, and everyone assumed the lake it borders was also heavily patrolled and monitored. Not so apparently.

But now Yettaw, a reportedly troubled former Vietnam War veteran, has inadvertently given the military authorities just the excuse they need to further isolate and marginalise Aung San Suu Kyi -– who after so many years, still remains a potent icon for democratic struggle in Myanmar.

The trial is patently ridiculous. Aung San Suu Kyi has been effectively put on trial for having her house broken into. Her lawyers will try and argue that she knew nothing about the American planned to visit her (how could she, she is in utter isolation with no phone, email and few visitors) and moreover she tried in vain to encourage him to leave.

In fact, they will try and turn the charges on their head, arguing instead it is the State who has failed in it duty to protect her. It’s a neat idea, but it’s almost certain to fail.

The regime was looking for an excuse to yet again extend her house arrest, which was due to expire at the end of the month. In its warped way, it likes to do things by the book –- the problem is the generals wrote the book and continue to twist the penal code to their own advantage. John Yettaw’s little night-time swim provides the perfect reason to extend her house-arrest or worse still, actually jail her in the notorious and sinisterly named Insein Prison.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s lawyers say the prosecution plans to call 22 witnesses ... 21 of them government employees. Diplomatic sources think the junta's tactic might be to drag the legal proceedings out for several weeks or even months until the media has lost interest and then quietly extend her detention well beyond next year’s planned elections.

The elections will be the result of an interminable process run by the junta, to supposedly re-introduce democracy in Myanmar. It’s involved years of discussions, and a wholesale rewriting of the constitution.

What the generals don’t like to highlight is that their so called “Roadmap to Democracy” also included a clause which forbids citizens who’ve had children with foreigners, from running for office.

That conveniently means Aung San Suu Kyi will be ineligible to run, because she was married to a British man Michael Aris and had two sons with him. But analysts say there is fear among the Junta, led by Senior General Than Shwe, that even under house arrest Aung San Suu Kyi still poses a threat to their attempt to hold a sham vote and proclaim democracy, while continuing to run the country with Stalinist-style brutality.

Just the mere act of holding a ballot may remind many of the 1990 elections that Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won by a landslide and that the military then ignored. That could then provide the trigger for more demonstrations, similar to the Saffron Revolution in 2007 which saw Buddhist monks being mercilessly beaten and arrested, after they tried to lead a people’s uprising against the regime.

So perhaps Than Shwe is acting early – getting Suu Kyi even more securely locked up, and they hope, discredited by a trial, even if the charges are spurious at best.

Then perhaps the plan is to go ahead and ask the people to vote for them next year. The only problem is the press isn’t going to forget about Aung San Suu Kyi and neither is the international community. The EU is also talking about extending sanctions against the regime and the trial, if it achieves anything, will only further entrench the contempt with which most Burmese regard the military, which has ruled them with such brutality since 1962.

So what will be the result of Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial?

Well I’d wager it’ll be a continuation of the status quo. The military will carry on ruling Myanmar, regardless of the result of next year’s election result. Aung San Suu Kyi will continue to be locked up at home or in prison, depending on whether she’s found innocent or guilty.

The sanctions will continue to fail to bring the regime to its knees, regardless of whether they are extended or maintained and the people of Myanmar will continue to suffer, regardless of whether we all lose interest or remain transfixed in horrified indignation.