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Tainan investigators are looking for three witnesses to assassination try

Officials investigating President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) election-eve shooting showed pictures yesterday of potential witnesses -- two smiling young women and a man in a polo shirt -- and urged them to report to police.

The photos of the bystanders were taken just before Chen was shot while standing in an open Jeep passing crowds of supporters in Tainan on March 19.

Police, who haven't identified any suspects, have encouraged people to share their photos and video images from the scene. Officials said that the people in the pictures shown yesterday weren't suspects.

"We're not saying they have problems. We just want them to come forward and tell us whether they saw anything suspicious along that road," Tainan Chief Prosecutor Kuo Chen-ni (郭珍妮) told reporters.

One picture showed two young women smiling at the camera, with a man and a woman in the background wearing motorcycle helmets and waving campaign flags as the president's motorcade passed.

Another showed a middle-aged man in a polo shirt standing by a parked red car.

The prosecutors were also still looking for two men seen leaving the scene shortly after the shooting. Security camera footage of the two men was first shown on television last week.

The investigators have urged the two men to contact them but they haven't yet, Kuo said.

"We cannot determine yet whether they are suspects. We also don't know whether they live in Tainan City," Kuo said.

US forensics experts examined Chen this week and said the injury was legitimate -- not faked, as some skeptics claim.

The US team was working for noted Taiwanese-American forensics expert Henry Lee (李昌鈺). Lee is expected to draw up a report using his team's information, and present it to the authorities during a visit to Taipei later this month.
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