An 11-member panel of the Ministry of Justice yesterday released its final report on the Special Investigation Division’s (SID) alleged wiretapping of the Legislative Yuan’s switchboard, concluding that the incident stemmed from administrative errors rather than a deliberate attempt to bug the legislature.
Deputy Minister of Justice Chen Ming-tang (陳明堂) told an afternoon press conference that Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) and two SID prosecutors, Yang Jung-tsung (楊榮宗) and Cheng Shen-yuan (鄭深元), would be the subject of further investigation by the ministry’s Prosecutors Evaluation Committee.
The SID’s wiretaps of the legislature’s general line has been at the center of a political storm involving an alleged conspiracy by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) and Huang to remove Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) from his post.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
Huang and Yang, SID’s chief prosecutor, will be referred to the committee for supervisory negligence, while Cheng, the prosecutor overseeing the wiretap assignment, will be held accountable for administrative errors, according to the panel’s report.
The SID has said that it mistakenly assumed that the telephone number 0972-630-235 belonged to a legislative assistant and that nothing was recorded on the 21 compact discs it obtained from the Investigation Bureau from the wiretap.
The ministry’s ad hoc panel, established on Sept. 29, supported the SID’s stance, but said that the error could have been avoided.
Telephone records for that number in the six months before the SID began its wiretap showed that the number averaged about 364 calls a day during that time, which prosecutors should have realized meant that it might not be the number of an individual, Chen said.
Chen said the panel had concluded that the SID’s application to wiretap the number was legal.
The SID’s wiretapping became headline news after the division held two press conferences on Sept. 28. In the morning press conference, Yang said 0972-630-235 was not the legislature’s main number. Huang held the second press conference that evening to apologize for the mistake.
Opposition lawmakers had questioned the motive for wiretapping the legislature’s general line, seeing it as overtly political and part of a collaborative effort between Ma, Jiang and Huang to undermine Wang and the opposition.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus slammed the report as full of lies that “takes people for fools.”
“The report is unacceptable to the public,” DPP spokesperson Wang Min-sheng (王閔生) said.
Huang is under investigation by several agencies for discussing the wiretapping with Ma on several occasions even though the SID had not yet closed its investigation.
The US government has signed defense cooperation agreements with Japan and the Philippines to boost the deterrence capabilities of countries in the first island chain, a report by the National Security Bureau (NSB) showed. The main countries on the first island chain include the two nations and Taiwan. The bureau is to present the report at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The US military has deployed Typhon missile systems to Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture and Zambales province in the Philippines during their joint military exercises. It has also installed NMESIS anti-ship systems in Japan’s Okinawa
‘WIN-WIN’: The Philippines, and central and eastern European countries are important potential drone cooperation partners, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung said Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) in an interview published yesterday confirmed that there are joint ventures between Taiwan and Poland in the drone industry. Lin made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper). The government-backed Taiwan Excellence Drone International Business Opportunities Alliance and the Polish Chamber of Unmanned Systems on Wednesday last week signed a memorandum of understanding in Poland to develop a “non-China” supply chain for drones and work together on key technologies. Asked if Taiwan prioritized Poland among central and eastern European countries in drone collaboration, Lin
Renewed border fighting between Thailand and Cambodia showed no signs of abating yesterday, leaving hundreds of thousands of displaced people in both countries living in strained conditions as more flooded into temporary shelters. Reporters on the Thai side of the border heard sounds of outgoing, indirect fire yesterday. About 400,000 people have been evacuated from affected areas in Thailand and about 700 schools closed while fighting was ongoing in four border provinces, said Thai Rear Admiral Surasant Kongsiri, a spokesman for the military. Cambodia evacuated more than 127,000 villagers and closed hundreds of schools, the Thai Ministry of Defense said. Thailand’s military announced that
CABINET APPROVAL: People seeking assisted reproduction must be assessed to determine whether they would be adequate parents, the planned changes say Proposed amendments to the Assisted Reproduction Act (人工生殖法) advanced yesterday by the Executive Yuan would grant married lesbian couples and single women access to legal assisted reproductive services. The proposed revisions are “based on the fundamental principle of respecting women’s reproductive autonomy,” Cabinet spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) quoted Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君), who presided over a Cabinet meeting earlier yesterday, as saying at the briefing. The draft amendment would be submitted to the legislature for review. The Ministry of Health and Welfare, which proposed the amendments, said that experts on children’s rights, gender equality, law and medicine attended cross-disciplinary meetings, adding that
RSS