Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers yesterday demanded prosecutors re-investigate the election-eve shooting of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) on March 19, 2004.
The demand came after arms maker Tang Shou-yi (唐守義), who is living in China, retracted the confession he originally made to prosecutors and disclosed what he called "the truth" in a letter to reporters and KMT Legislator Lee Ching-hua (李慶華).
Tang said the 319 shooting investigation report was fabricated by the police, and he was asked to say what the police wanted when he made his statement.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
National Police Agency (NPA) Director-General Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜) met me several times and implied that I had to act in accordance with their "plot," Tang said in a letter to Lee.
"I was told by the police that I would be released if I cooperated with them and promised to leave the country soon after," Tang said in the letter.
"Five days after my release, I got a phone call from the prosecutors. They wanted to know when I would leave Taiwan. I told them I needed to spend some time with my family," he said.
Tang, who was imprisoned for fraud last year, completed his sentence in May and fled to China in August.
KMT Legislator Tsai Chin-lung (蔡錦隆) told a press conference that Tang's accusation was entirely plausible.
"Why else would prosecutors suggest a six-and-a-half-year sentence for him for arms making without prohibiting him from leaving the country," Tsai said.
Prosecutors closed the investigation into the 319 shooting last August, concluding that a dead construction worker, Chen Yi-hsiung (陳義雄), who was filmed standing near the shooting scene, was entirely responsible for the assassination attempt.
Tang alleged that Chen Yi-hsiung wasn't at the scene when the gun was fired and the scar left on the president's belly was not caused by the gun he made.
However, NPA Deputy Director-General Hung Sheng-kun rebutted Tang's accusations in a press conference, saying that there were no irregularities during the investigation.
Kuo Chen-ni (郭珍妮), a spokeswoman for the Tainan District Prosecutors' Office, yesterday told a press conference that people should trust forensic expert Henry Lee (李昌鈺), who assisted in the reconstruction of the crime scene and the forensic examinations, before publishing a report that said the shooting was genuine.
"Should we believe a prestigious forensic expert, or a wanted man?" Kuo added.
Tang's statements during the investigation were recorded by prosecutors and police in accordance with the law, and his statements were cross-checked before prosecutors came to the conclusion they were the truth, she said, adding that Tang's accusations were "groundless."
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators yesterday accused Tang of collaborating with the KMT and China in a bid to influence Saturday's mayoral elections.
DPP Legislator Tsai Chi-fang (蔡啟芳) told a press conference that Tang, who is in China, contradicted himself by saying in the letter that the bullet found by the police at the scene of the shooting was made by him while the wound on President Chen's body was not a match with that bullet.
Tsai said the contradiction resulted from Tang's failure to explain why his bullet ended up being found on Chen's person.
DPP Legislator Yu Jan-daw (余政道), who was also present at the conference, said the KMT was trying to influence the results of the election by employing the same tactics it used before the presidential election in 2004, when it had fugitive tycoon Chen Yu-hao (陳由豪) make groundless accusations against the president.
Additional reporting by Rich Chang
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching