When John Yettaw slipped into the warm waters of Rangoon's Lake Inya last Tuesday to swim to the house where Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has been confined for the past six years, he can have had little idea of the scale of the furore he was triggering.

Ms Suu Kyi and Mr Yettaw, along with Ms Suu Kyi's two housekeepers and her doctor, are now being held in Burma's notorious Insein prison.