Verdict scheduled for next week in Myanmar reporters' trial

A judge in Myanmar says he will deliver a verdict next Monday in the trial of two Reuters journalists that has become a key test of media freedom in the former military dictatorship.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were charged with illegally possessing official documents and face possible jail terms of up to 14 years. The reporters say they were framed by police, and did not solicit or knowingly possess any secret documents.

The two reporters had been working on a story about a massacre of Muslim Rohingya men by security forces in a village in Rakhine state during a counterinsurgency operation that critics say involved massive human rights violations and was responsible for driving 700,000 people to flee for their lives into neighboring Bangladesh.