Mon, Apr 03, 2006 page3

• Prosecutors hunt gunrunners in Philippines

  SUCCESS The Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office has recently arrested a number of Taiwanese gun smugglers who were based in Manila

  • By Rich Chang / STAFF REPORTER
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  With the cooperation of Philippine forces, Taiwan's military police recently tracked down two Taiwanese arms smugglers in the Philippines.

  But the Ministry of National Defense's decision to reject an additional request for a manhunt for a notorious gunrunner believed to be hiding in Manila may jeopardize Taiwan's security, prosecutors said.

  "Kaohsiung prosecutors have discovered that arms smugglers are sourcing weapons from the Philippine military and are of the opinion that the best way of cracking down on trafficking of illegal weapons in Taiwan is to start in the Philippines," a prosecutor at the Kaohsiung Bureau of the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office, Chang Hsueh-ming (張學明), told the Taipei Times.

  

  Illegal weapons confiscated by law enforcement officers are displayed on a table in Tainan yesterday.

  PHOTO: WANG CHUN-CHUNG, TAIPEI TIMES

  Chang said that Ting Cheng-hsiang (丁正祥), a Taiwanese arms trafficker living in Manila, was the prosecutors' primary target, but that the defence ministry's Military Police Command had refused to send a taskforce to hunt him down.

  Chang said that prosecutors received intelligence late last year indicating that Ting was in the city and the National Security Bureau had agreed to provide NT$300,000 (US$9,250) to finance a manhunt. However, the military police had declined to undertake the mission, Chang said.

  Real Admiral Yang Wen-hsien (楊文賢), director of Political Warfare at Military Police Command, was cited in the Chinese-language Apple Daily as saying that it was too dangerous to send military personnel on a manhunt outside the nation's borders.

  However, the military police successfully captured Chu Jui-teh (朱浚德) and Shi Nai-shin (許迺欣), two gangsters in Ting's gunrunning ring, in March last year.

  Chang said that the arrest of two of his accomplices had not stopped Ting from continuing to smuggle weapons.

  Ting, 50, was sentenced to life in prison and jailed in Taiwan, but escaped in 1989 and fled to the Philippines.

  He has been involved in the illegal weapons trade for more than 15 years, according to Chang.

  In February, the prosecutor said, a Taiwanese seafood trader surnamed Liou traveled with his wife on a business trip to Manila. On arrival at the Manila airport, Liou was kidnapped by a Taiwanese man and five Filipinos.

  According to Taiwanese police, the kidnappers made phone calls to Liou's daughter in Taiwan, asking for a ransom of US$7.5 million. Four days later, Liou escaped from the house in which he was being held after his captors fell asleep.

  Chang said that law enforcement officers investigating the crime believed that Ting was behind it.

  When interviewed by Taiwanese police, Ting's former accomplice Chu said that the pair worked with a Japanese Filipino by the name of Nemoto Akira to smuggle arms procured from the Philippine military into Taiwan.

  According to Chu, Akira had close ties with the Philippine military and frequently purchased rifles, pistols, submachine guns, grenades and ammunition outside a military base near the Manila airport.

  Chang said that according to Chu, it was easy to procure even advanced weapons from the Philippine military.

  In June, Philippine police, in cooperation with a Taiwanese taskforce, arrested Akira at his luxurious residence in Manila and seized a number of illegal weapons.

  Chang said that Akira was a leading figure in the Manila arms smuggling underworld. In January last year, when Akira learned that Taiwanese and Philippine forces were looking for Chu in Manila, he ordered more than 30 Filipinos, armed with pistols and rifles, to "protect" him.

  Chang said although Philippine and Taiwanese forces were forced to cancel the mission, they were finally able to arrest Chu and brought him back to Taiwan to face trial in March last year.

  Chang said that although Akira was now in custody, Ting and other gangsters were still smuggling illegal weapons into Taiwan.

  Prosecutors have vowed not to give up on capturing Ting and another of his accomplices by the name of Chao Pei-shen (趙培盛), a former resident of Kaohsiung who fled to the Philippines after he learned that police were after him.

  Former Kaohsiung prosecutor Yeh Ching-tsai (葉清財) told the Taipei Times that a detained gangster by the name of Shi, who was in charge of placing illegal weapons in cargo leaving Manila, said that he had smuggled a large number of weapons into Taiwan through Kaohsiung Harbor.

  Shi said the arms were imported in cargo containing wood, coco leaves or palm trees, as well as seafood or other agricultural products.

  Fishing boats were also used to smuggle weapons into the country, Yeh said.
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