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Reporters summoned as witnesses, ministry says

The Ministry of National Defense (MND) said yesterday that three reporters had been summoned by military prosecutors for questioning next week as witnesses and not defendants.
“We need their help,” Vice Minister of National Defense Lin Chen-yi (林鎮夷) told reporters at the legislature yesterday morning. “We hope that they will help us.”
The reporters, all from Chinese-language newspapers, have been summoned as part of an investigation into the establishment of Taiwan Goal, an arms-dealing firm set up by the government in January that was disbanded after it became the subject of controversy.
Lin said that the summons for the three reporters were issued by the Military Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, so the ministry does not and will not interfere in the case.
Lin, quoting the ministry’s Department of Military Law Director-General Wu Tai-jen’s (吳泰然), said that prosecutors simply needed the three reporters’ statements as part of their probe into who leaked classified military information.
Military prosecutors notified the three reporters — the China Times’ Wu Ming-chieh (吳明杰), the United Daily News’ Kao Ling-yun (高凌雲) and the United Evening News’ Lee Chih-teh (李志德) — of the summons by telephone on Wednesday morning.
The prosecutors asked the trio to report to court at 10am next Wednesday. Failure to attend without a valid excuse will lead to a fine of NT$15,000.
Kao signed the summons upon receiving it on Thursday but said he would ignore it. Lee said he would sign the summons and write a statement in his defense, but would not attend the hearing because of concerns about freedom of speech. Wu said he would not sign the summons nor write any statement in defense, calling the court order “military white terror.”

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