BANGKOK (AP) - The United Nations has ruled the continued detention of Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi violates the country’s own laws as well as those of the international community, a legal document says.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has spent 13 of the last 19 years under house arrest, with the ruling junta yearly extending her detention despite international outcries.

"The latest renewal (2008) of the order to place Ms. Suu Kyi under house arrest not solely violates international law but also national domestic laws of Myanmar," said a legal opinion by the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions that has been sent to the Myanmar government.

Although the ruling is unlikely to spring Suu Kyi from detention, it is uncommon for the world body to accuse a member country of violating its own laws, and while the junta has always marched to its own tune it has also resented being regarded as an international pariah.

The working group, an arm of the U.N. Human Rights Council, said Suu Kyi was being held under Myanmar’s 1975 State Protection Law, which only allows renewable arrest orders for a maximum of five years. This five-year period ended at the end of May 2008.

The opinion also questioned whether Suu Kyi represented a threat to the "security of the State or public peace and tranquility," the provision of the 1975 law authorities have pointed to as the reason for her continued detention.