Reuters reporters face verdict in Myanmar 'state secrets' case

Two Reuters journalists accused of breaching Myanmar's state secrets law during their reporting of a massacre of Rohingya face a court ruling Monday that could see them jailed for up to 14 years.

The case has outraged the international community for attacking media freedom and has intensified the glare on Myanmar security forces over its crackdown on the Muslim minority in Rakhine state.

Army-led "clearance operations" last year drove 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh, carrying with them widespread accounts of atrocities -- rape, murder and arson -- by Myanmar security forces.

Reporters Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, have been held in Yangon's Insein prison since their arrest in December.

They say they were invited to dinner by police who handed them documents before the pair were arrested as they left the restaurant for possessing classified material.

The duo, both Myanmar nationals, were charged with violating the Official Secrets Act, a draconian British colonial-era law which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years.

The reporters deny the charges, insisting they were set up while doing their jobs to expose the extrajudicial killing of 10 Rohingya Muslims in a Rakhine village in September last year.

The army pre-emptively published its version of events at Inn Din village, conceding the Rohingya men were killed while in custody in a one-off act of abuse by a mix of security forces and ethnic Rakhine locals.

The verdict was initially due last Monday, but was delayed due to the apparent illness of the presiding judge.

On Saturday, more than 100 journalists and activists marched through Yangon in support of the reporters, whose trial echoes the treatment of government critics during the junta years.

"We want the immediate release of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo," journalist Hlin Thit Zin Wai told AFP.

"The right to information as well as access to information for the people is really difficult."