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A military court in Myanmar has sentenced deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her economic adviser, an Australian academic, to three years in prison.

A closed court in the capital Naypyidaw convicted the Nobel Peace Prize laureate alongside Sean Turnell, an honorary professor of economics at Macquarie University in Sydney, of violating the country’s official secrets act, which carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.

The pair had pleaded not guilty last month.

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed Turnell’s conviction to the Financial Times. Turnell also faces charges of violating the country’s immigration law.

Aung San Suu Kyi, 77, has already been sentenced to 20 years in prison on multiple charges including corruption and incitement against the junta. She received a three-year penalty with hard labour earlier this month for electoral fraud.

Turnell, who previously worked at the Reserve Bank of Australia, was arrested in the wake of a February 2021 coup in which the military overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government.

The trials have taken place in closed courts, and a gag order has prevented the defendants’ lawyers, who have had limited access to their clients, from speaking with the media.

Earlier this month, a military court sentenced former UK ambassador Vicky Bowman and her husband, dissident artist Htein Lin, to a year in prison over immigration offences.

In the past, convictions of foreign nationals in Myanmar have preceded their release and deportation, with sentences commuted or charges dropped.

Amnesty International called the ruling “an outright sham” and “the latest in a string of politically motivated cases all designed to cement the rule of the rights-abusing Myanmar military”.

Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, has arrested more than 15,000 people and killed more than 2,000 since the February coup, according to local advocacy group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.