Chang said the prosecutors had asked the reporters to hand over the secret documents but that they had refused to do so.
Huang said there were grounds for reasonable suspicion that the newspaper's office and reporters' residences contained evidence relating to the information leak. But he declined to identify possible sources of the leak.
The editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Chen, on the other hand, said, "We do not admit that we had the interrogation records."
"The pursuit of the truth is the media's mission. Our reporters were not obtaining material with criminal intent," he said.
The newspaper said the fact that the prosecutor "did not acquire any relevant materials" indicated that the search was hasty and based on insufficient evidence.
But prosecutors said that the validity of the action should not be judged by its results.
RSS