Posters of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
(Creative Commons)

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi lost a bid to end more than a decade of house arrest Friday, when the country's supreme court rejected her most recent appeal.

The detention will keep Suu Kyi, the leader of the National League for Democracy, from participating in general elections planned for later this year.

The court's decision had been expected, her lawyer said, and Suu Kyi and her lawyers are launching a final special appeal to Myanmar's chief justice. However, appeals by two female assistants against similar house arrests were recently rejected.

The ruling drew fire from American, British and UN diplomats present in the courtroom.

"Although the decision comes as no surprise, it is deeply disappointing," British Ambassador Andrew Heyn said in an interview with The Guardian. "We continue to believe that [she] should released immediately."

French ambassador Jean-Pierre Lafosse called Suu Kyi the "victim of a sham trial."

Myanmar's military junta has kept Suu Kyi largely imprisoned or under house arrest since 1990, when her party won the country's most recent national elections by a landslide.  Almost 20 years later, more than 2,000 junta opponents are still in prison.

Suu Kyi's house arrest was extended in August when she was convicted of sheltering American citizen John Yettaw, 53, in her home and detention center in Yangon. Yettaw swam uninvited to her island home on May 3.

Suu Kyi was initially sentenced
to three years of hard labor, however, junta chief Senior
General Than Shwe commuted the sentence to 18 months of house arrest.

Yettaw later said he had a "vision" that Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, would be assassinated and felt he had to warn her. Yettaw was sentenced to seven years in prison and hard labor. The sentence was dismissed a week later, and Yettaw left the country.

The court did not provide any reasoning behind its rejection of Suu Kyi's latest appeal Friday, The Guardian reports.