Pair confess to agent's murder

Taipei County police yesterday arrested two suspects as part of their probe into the murder of former intelligence agent Chiang Jen-hsi (蔣仁曦).

Chiang, who worked for the Bureau of Military Intelligence, traveled to China in 1999 where he was arrested after attempting to photograph a military airport.

Chiang served eight years of a 12-year prison sentence before being released. He returned to Taiwan in July last year and received NT$8 million (US$250,000) in compensation from the government.

Police said that Chiang's corpse was found in the Tamsui River (淡水河) on Jan. 19 with two large bricks tied to it. Detectives then discovered Chiang's Taipei residence had been ransacked.

Further investigations discovered that NT$1 million had been taken from Chiang's accounts.

Police yesterday arrested two suspects, Yu Shun-ming (余順明) and Huang Jui-chih (洪睿志), both of whom had previously served time in the same Chinese jail as Chiang.

Police alleged that the pair learned about Chiang's compensation in December last year and kidnapped him.

They said that the pair invited Chiang out to dinner late one night early last month, where they kidnapped him and took him to a house in Sinjhuang (新莊), Taipei County. Chiang was held captive for a week during which time he was tortured and forced to tell them his the codes to his ATM cards, police said.

They said that around Jan. 10 the pair drove Chiang to a bridge on an expressway and threw him into the river below.

Police said that the pair had confessed to the murder during questioning.