BANGKOK — The biggest obstacle to releasing two imprisoned Reuters reporters in Myanmar was not the country’s military, diplomats and others say, but its de facto civilian leader: Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate and former political prisoner herself who once declared, “Please use your liberty to promote ours.”

Her seemingly incongruous opposition to freeing the two reporters, U Wa Lone and U Kyaw Soe Oo, who were let go this week after more than a year in detention, was well known among the diplomatic emissaries who repeatedly had urged her to release them. At times, she became angry when foreigners raised the case of the two men, who were imprisoned in connection with their coverage of the country’s crackdown on the Rohingya minority.

In an interview on Japanese television, she declared that they broke the law even before a court had delivered a verdict. After their conviction, she insisted that their legal appeals must be completed before she would intervene, despite clear evidence that the police entrapped them.

She defied a relentless if quiet campaign by the Reuters news service, the United States government and other Western nations to free the pair. But the international pressure appeared to have an effect in recent weeks, at least among Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s top aides.