Sixteen defendants were summoned to the Kaohsiung District Court for a hearing in the Kaohsiung City Council bribery case, but only four of them actually showed up.
The four were DPP Legislator Lin Chin-hsing (
Chen is a former KMT member and Lee is a former DPP member, but both were expelled from their parties after they were indicted on charges of accepting bribes to throw the election of the Kaohsiung City Council speaker.
Among the no-shows at the third hearing in the case were former KMT members Tsai Ching-yuan (
Also failing to appear were Huang Shih-lung (
According to law, elected city councilors are afforded judicial immunity for as long as council is in session.
This was the second time these indicted councilors had taken advantage of the judicial immunity they have during a council session to avoid a summons by the court.
The court filed an official notice to the city council on May 9 urging these councilors to be present for yesterdays hearing. It didn't want a repeat of the second hearing on May 2, for which only four councilors attended.
The Kaohsiung District Court made no immediate comment about the repeated absences.
In yesterday's hearing Chen Han-sheng, Lee Chiao-ju and Hsu did not defend themselves when questioned by the judge. Lin, on the other hand, insisted on his innocence.
Chang Wen-hsiu is accused of taking a NT$5 million bribe from Kaohsiung City Council Speaker Chu An-hsiung (
Lin was indicted as an accomplice because he was present when the alleged transaction took place.
"I was there, but I did not know my ex-wife accepted the bribe. How can they indict me because of this?" Lin said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods