The Taipei District Court announced yesterday that the majority of its hearings on President Chen Shui-bian's (
The announcement came in the wake of the constitutional interpretation handed down by the Council of Grand Justices on June 15. The interpretation confirmed the president's constitutional right to decide what constitutes a state secret and his right to refuse disclosure.
The Council of Grand Justices ruled the president enjoys immunity from criminal investigation and cannot be questioned by prosecutors during his tenure.
The president, with the authority conferred upon him by the Constitution and its additional articles, has the privilege of keeping secret classified information concerning national security, national defense and diplomacy if he determines that their disclosure would compromise national security and interests, the council said.
This privilege includes the right to refuse to give testimony and to produce evidence for that purpose in court.
"The court values the ruling of the Council of Grand Justices and decides the case concerns national security elements. From now on the case will proceed behind closed doors," Judge Tsai Shou-hsun (蔡守訓) said at the beginning of the hearing yesterday.
Reporters and auditors were then asked to leave the courtroom.
Chen on Thursday asked Taipei District Court to return within five days all materials collected as evidence in the case, saying in a statement that the Council of Grand Justices had ruled that the president has the right to refuse to surrender documents to the court.
The president was referring to the material Prosecutor Eric Chen (陳瑞仁) seized from the Presidential Office when he was investigating the "state affairs fund" case. First lady Wu Shu-jen (
Taipei District Court spokesman Liu Shou-sung (劉壽嵩) told reporters yesterday that the court had yet to decide on how it would handle the president's request.
Meanwhile, the Presidential Office yesterday issued a statement saying that Eric Chen had never gained the president's permission to seize the materials he collected from the Presidential Office as evidence in the "state affairs fund" case.
"Eric Chen called the Presidential Office on July 31 [last year] before he came. When he arrived, he showed a written order demanding the documents, saying that he would take the next step should the Presidential Office reject his request," the statement said.
"Then [Eric Chen] impounded the documents and left. He didn't meet with the president, nor did he acquire the president's consent to his request," it said.
In response, Eric Chen yesterday said: "President Chen should have known that I'd entered the Presidential Office to take those documents."
Pan-blue lawmakers, meanwhile, yesterday blasted the president's request to retrieve the document from the court.
"The move reflects the fact that the president is scared of being found guilty," Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Secretary-General Wu Den-yih (
People First Party Legislator Liu Wen-hsiung (
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Huang Wei-cher (
"Retrieving the secret documents does not mean that the investigation into this case would be obstructed," he said.
DPP Legislator Gao Jyh-peng (
Additional reporting by Flora Wang
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