Report: March 19 shooter was not a political assassin

Numerous discrepancies during the election-eve shooting of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) show that it was not a political assassination, a Hong Kong investigative firm said yesterday.

Steve Vickers, President and CEO of International Risk Ltd, spoke about his company's investigation into the shooting yesterday at a press conference arranged by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).

The company, which handles corporate intelligence and business risk investigations, was hired by a private group of overseas Chinese in April to look into the shooting.

Vickers' report echoed many of the of the pro-blue camp's suspicions about the shooting, such as the choice of Chi-Mei Hospital for Chen and Lu's treatment, the lack of security around the pair in the Tainan motorcade and discrepancies during treatment.

Vickers, a former senior police investigator in Hong Kong, said that while he did not doubt there had been a gunshot wound, the legitimacy of the investigation's evidence was questionable.

"A lot of the veracity of the investigation depends on the evidential provenance of the two bullets [found]," said Vickers.

The origins of two bullets and the casings found, said Vickers, seem questionable since they had different compositions and were seemingly shot together.

While the report was released in May on the company's website, it had failed to receive Taiwanese attention until now, said Vickers.

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), responding yesterday to the report, mocked the KMT and the PFP for their "never-ending quest for truth and its never-ending need for new experts." Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦), director of the DPP's department of communications, said that the pan-blue camp has a pre-set stance and conclusions and simply look for experts prepared to substantiate their theories.