Two men suspected of planting suitcase explosive devices on a high-speed rail train and near a lawmaker’s office on Friday last week were repatriated from China yesterday, investigators said.
Investigators made the announcement at a press conference presided over by National Police Agency Director-General Wang Cho-chiun (王卓鈞) yesterday afternoon.
Police said that the two men, surnamed Chu (朱) and Hu (胡), were apprehended and repatriated under the Cross-Strait Agreement on Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance, and arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at about 3:30pm under police escort.
Photo: Mandy Cheng, AFP
The pair left for Macau at about 4pm on Friday, just hours after they allegedly planted explosives on a high-speed rail train traveling from Greater Kaohsiung to Taipei, as well as outside Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Chia-chen’s (廬嘉辰) constituency office in New Taipei City (新北市), police said.
The suitcases contained gasoline, electric detonators and timers, with some holding gas cartridges, hydrochloric acid and sodium cyanide, police said.
Preliminary investigations indicated that Chu was in charge of planting the suitcases, while Hu was thought to be responsible for driving Chu to the locations and manufacturing the explosive devices, Wang said.
He said that Chu had confessed to the allegations made against him and had given a statement while being questioned by Chinese police, but Hu, a lawyer from Greater Taichung, had denied any involvement in the case.
Although police had suspected the incidents could be politically motivated because a note that included President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) name had been attached to the suitcases outside Lu’s office, no evidence has been uncovered to suggest politics were a motive, Wang said.
Investigators identified Hu as a possible suspect on Friday night after DNA traces collected from the suitcases pointed to him, only to realize that he had boarded a flight to Macau earlier that day, Wang said.
After contacting the Macau police, investigators found that Hu had gone to Zhuhai City in Guangdong Province at 7pm on Friday, Wang said.
Wang said investigators named Chu as an accomplice after fingerprints collected from a minivan that was used to transport the suitcases reportedly matched Chu’s and because he had been on the same flight to Macau as Hu.
“We then immediately activated the cross-strait crime-fighting mechanism to alert Chinese police so they could apprehend the pair,” Wang said.
The men were arrested in a hotel in Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, at about 1am on Sunday, he said.
Huang Chi-chih (黃繼智), director of the Criminal Investigation Bureau’s 5th Investigation Brigade and a specialist in bomb prevention, said the suspects could have learned to make explosives from the Internet.
“Although the explosives were crudely made, they could still have caused devastating damage had they been detonated,” Huang said.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS