Huang Shang-feng (黃上豐), who allegedly hired two gangsters to assassinate a Kaohsiung prosecutor and fled to China 14 years ago, was escorted back to Taiwan late on Thursday night.
“Huang was repatriated from a Guangdong Province prison on Thursday, “ Deputy Minister of Justice Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) told a press conference yesterday.
NEW DEAL
Huang Shih-ming said Huang Shang-feng’s repatriation was carried out differently than similar cases in the past.
Following an agreement on fighting crime reached during the latest round of cross-strait talks, Criminal Investigation Bureau agents escorted Huang Shang-feng on a flight from Macau to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, the deputy minister said.
In the pact signed on April 26, Taiwan and China agreed to help each other probe and collect evidence, serve judicial documents and confirm each other’s civil judgments and arbitration awards.
The earlier arrangement —the Kinmen Accord signed in 1990 — stipulated that illegal immigrants and criminals only be returned to their point of origins between Taiwan’s Kinmen and China’s Xiamen.
Kaohsiung judges ordered that the fugitive be detained yesterday.
In 1995, he allegedly paid two gangsters to kill Kaohsiung prosecutor Chang Chin-tu (張金塗) after the prosecutor indicted Huang Shang-feng’s mother for trafficking heroin.
ESCAPE TO CHINA
Chang survived being shot 12 times but was disabled. Huang Shang-fang absconded to China three days before the attack on Chang.
Police said he fled to Shenzhen and became a drug dealer, adding that he and other Taiwanese fugitives had ganged together to smuggle drugs from China and Vietnam into Taiwan.
In 1998, Huang Shang-feng was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a court in Guangdong Province for the 1997 murder of a Taiwanese gangster surnamed Wu in Shenzhen.
Wu had reportedly asked him to pay a US$1 million gambling debt he allegedly owed a casino in the Philippines.
RELEASED
Huang Shang-feng was released on parole from a Guangdong prison in late 2005 and was later suspected of leading a gang that ran illegal casinos and dealt drugs in Shenzhen.
In November 2007, police arrested Huang Shang-fang in Zhuhai, Guangdong, as he was negotiating with Chinese gangsters about a drug deal.
Huang was sentenced to 18 months in jail by a Chinese court. After completing the sentence on Thursday, he was brought to Macau and then to Taiwan, the ministry said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
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