The police yesterday made public video footage of the suspect who allegedly triggered a van explosion near the Taipei Railway Station yesterday and is suspected of also mailing letters to two local TV stations with bomb threats.
The video footage was from a security video system inside a convenience store on Taipei City's Gongyuan Road. On the footage, the suspect covered his face with a hat and a surgical mask. He was wandering outside the store for awhile and seemed to be waiting for something.
PHOTO: FANG BIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
When a FedEx deliveryman came, he immediately hurried into the convenience store and asked the clerk to deliver two packages, which were the two bomb threats to TV stations.
After the footage was released, a man was taken into custody by police last night under suspicion of being the man in the video. According to the Taipei City Police Department's Chungcheng First Precinct, the man had been loitering around a convenience store in the area when police spotted him because of his conspicuous outfit.
The man was wearing a fisherman's hat and a sports jacket on which the words "CIA" had been written in black marker. However, the man was released after the FedEx deliveryman who had seen the bomb suspect confirmed that the man was not the one he had seen. The man was released.
"[The suspect in the video] looks 170cm tall and 35 years of age," said Feng Tung-san (馮棟森), deputy commissioner of the National Police Agency's Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB). "In the letters, the suspect said that there will be at least four bomb explosions in the city before election day."
Feng said that police had collected seven usable fingerprints from the crime scene and are currently matching them with their records.
In the meantime, the CIB also announced a NT$1 million reward to whoever provides sufficient information that leads to the arrest of the suspect.
Also, the police said that they strongly suspect that the suspect is a person who does not know how to use a computer because he handwrote the letters and misspelled several words in his letters.
The suspect sent the letters to TTV and TVBS on Thursday, stating that the Taipei Railway Station and Taipei 101 will be the targets of his attacks.
Around 12pm, a mini-van that had been loaded with 11 20kg gas tanks exploded in a parking lot next to the station. The vehicle was completely destroyed. Nobody was injured in the explosion, but two other vehicles parked nearby were also destroyed.
At Taipei 101, the police immediately sealed the building and carried out a search for other potential explosives.
The raid was conducted by more than 200 police officers, military police and special agents overnight, because President Chen Shui-bian (
In addition to a raid at the building, the military police also deployed snipers on the roofs of nearby buildings to prevent a potential assassination attempt or attack on the president during the activity.
Beijing could eventually see a full amphibious invasion of Taiwan as the only "prudent" way to bring about unification, the US Department of Defense said in a newly released annual report to Congress. The Pentagon's "Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2025," was in many ways similar to last year’s report but reorganized the analysis of the options China has to take over Taiwan. Generally, according to the report, Chinese leaders view the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) capabilities for a Taiwan campaign as improving, but they remain uncertain about its readiness to successfully seize
Taiwan is getting a day off on Christmas for the first time in 25 years. The change comes after opposition parties passed a law earlier this year to add or restore five public holidays, including Constitution Day, which falls on today, Dec. 25. The day marks the 1947 adoption of the constitution of the Republic of China, as the government in Taipei is formally known. Back then the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) governed China from Nanjing. When the KMT, now an opposition party in Taiwan, passed the legislation on holidays, it said that they would help “commemorate the history of national development.” That
Taiwan has overtaken South Korea this year in per capita income for the first time in 23 years, IMF data showed. Per capita income is a nation’s GDP divided by the total population, used to compare average wealth levels across countries. Taiwan also beat Japan this year on per capita income, after surpassing it for the first time last year, US magazine Newsweek reported yesterday. Across Asia, Taiwan ranked fourth for per capita income at US$37,827 this year due to sustained economic growth, the report said. In the top three spots were Singapore, Macau and Hong Kong, it said. South
Police today said they are stepping up patrols throughout the Taipei MRT system, after a social media user threatened to detonate a bomb at an unspecified station this afternoon. Although they strongly believe the threat to be unsubstantiated, Taipei Metro police and the Railway Police Bureau still said that security and patrols would be heightened through the system. Many copycat messages have been posted since Friday’s stabbing attacks at Taipei Main Station and near Zhongshan MRT Station that left three dead and 11 injured, police said. Last night, a Threads user in a post said they would detonate a bomb on the Taipei
RSS