YANGON, Nov 12: A top UN human rights official on Monday visited Myanmar’s notorious Insein prison as part of his probe into rights abuses and the actual death toll from the junta’s suppression of pro-democracy protests.

Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, who has been allowed back into Myanmar by the regime for the first time in four years, is on a mission to uncover how many people were killed and arrested in the September crackdown by security forces.

The UN expert, who arrived in Myanmar on Sunday, is also seeking to meet with political detainees and investigate claims of abuses against ethnic minority groups before leaving the country on Thursday.

Pinheiro visited the Insein jail outside Yangon for more than an hour along with UN and government officials, and escorted by police, witnesses said.

It was not immediately known whether he met any inmates.

The UN expert left the country in 2003 after learning his meeting with a political prisoner in Insein had been bugged.

Human rights groups have called on the envoy to pressure the junta to release all political prisoners.

AI on Friday estimated that 700 people arrested over the recent protests were still in detention although the government said only 91 of the 3,000 originally rounded up were being held.

Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was secretly held at Insein in 2003. At the time, former political prisoner Ko Aung told the BBC the British-built facility was known as the “darkest hell-hole in Burma”.

Journalist Win Tin, an adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi, and Min Ko Naing, who led pro-democracy protests in 1988 and was arrested this August after his group protested at rising prices, are among its most famous current inmates.

A Myanmar official confirmed that earlier on Monday, Pinheiro visited the Ngwekyaryan monastery in South Okkalapa, a satellite town of Yangon.

In September, witnesses said troops opened fire on crowds protesting at their treatment of the monks during a raid at the monastery, killing eight.

“I hope that I will have a very productive stay,” the UN rights expert told reporters upon his arrival.Pinheiro was expected to travel on Tuesday to the new capital Naypyidaw, 400 kilometres north of Yangon, to meet Prime Minister Thein Sein, the Myanmar official said.

He met on Sunday with officials of the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, the UN said. The gilded shrine is the most sacred in Myanmar and has traditionally been the rallying point for anti-government protests, including the most recent ones.

National hero General Aung San in 1946 demanded independence from Britain at the shrine and in 1988, his daughter Aung San Suu Kyi called for democracy there during mass protests against the regime which has ruled here since 1962.—AFP