According to still unconfirmed reports, authorities arrested several pro-democracy activists Thursday night.

Past court cases have demonstrated that Myanmar's judiciary has no independence from the country's ruling military junta, which wants Suu Kyi to remain out of politics until after a general election planned next year, observers said.

There was little hope that Suu Kyi would be found not guilty because her freedom might galvanise opposition to the government's scheduled general election in 2010 that promises to be neither free nor fair.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party won the last Myanmar election in 1990 by a landslide even though she was in jail at the time of the polls.

Analysts said Suu Kyi, deemed the only opposition politician the ruling regime fears and a democracy icon to her people, could seriously threaten the military's so-called political reforms, which it has dubbed a 'seven-step roadmap' to democracy.

Given this political reality, even Suu Kyi was not optimistic about the outcome of her trial.

'Daw (Mrs) Aung San Suu Kyi is prepared for the worst,' her attorney Nyan Win said Tuesday after the court's final hearing.