Former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) court-appointed attorney yesterday said the former president was hoping for a speedy response from the Council of Grand Justices to a request for a constitutional interpretation on the transfer of his case to Presiding Judge Tsai Shou-hsun (蔡守訓).
Speaking to reporters during a recess in the former president’s trial, Tseng Te-rong (曾德榮) said Chen had expressed concern about when the Council of Grand Justices would hand down its decision on whether switching judges in his case was constitutional.
Tseng said Chen told him he hoped the interpretation would be announced before the district court delivered its verdict, as any decision after that would be too late to have a significant effect, adding that “prompt justice is the only form of justice.”
In January, Chen’s office asked the council to rule on the legitimacy of his pre-trial detention and the switching of judges from Chou Chan-chun (周占春) to Tsai Shou-hsun (蔡守訓), who now presides over Chen’s embezzlement and corruption trials.
When Chou was presiding over Chen’s case last year, he twice ruled against detaining Chen, saying that Chen had no way to flee because as a former president he was constantly under the protection of special agents.
However, when the case was handed over to Tsai, he repeatedly ruled to keep the former president behind bars, arguing that Chen might collude with witnesses or try to abscond.
In December, a panel of judges ordered that Chou be replaced by Tsai, who would also preside over four additional cases filed against the former president. The switch was controversial, causing skeptics to question whether the decision to merge the trials was procedurally flawed and politically motivated.
The former president and his attorneys appeared in court yesterday as former Presidential Office secretary Chen Hsin-yi (陳心怡) and former Presidential Office director Lin Teh-hsun (林德訓) were questioned about the former president’s use of the presidential “state affairs fund.”
Chen Hsin-yi testified that the former president’s bookkeeper, Chen Chen-hui (陳鎮慧), had instructed her to put cash in the former first family’s safe, in amounts of between NT$5 million (US$150,000) and NT$10 million at different times. Chen Hsin-yi said she was told the money was “for the president’s use.”
She also said that in July the former president asked her to file an application for a passport for him “most urgently.” She said the reason was because the former president had been invited to visit overseas.
Also yesterday, former first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍) was questioned yesterday by the Supreme Prosecutors Office’s Special Investigation Panel (SIP) as a defendant for the first time.
The purpose of the session was to determine the value of the former first lady’s jewelry, as well as the flow of money in the former first family’s overseas accounts, local media reported.
Her lawyer Chen Kuo-hua (陳國華) accompanied her during questioning, but declined to comment on the case, saying only that the former first lady’s physical condition was fine.
Meanwhile, pro-independence groups yesterday said they would hold a rally on July 25 in support of the former president.
The groups said the purpose of the rally was to ask the Taipei District Court to release Chen Shui-bian and respect his rights.
The district court is scheduled to decide whether to keep Chen Shui-bian in detention on July 14, the groups said in a statement. They called on the public to support the former president outside the court that day and welcome him if he were released.
If the court decided to continue to detain him, they would hold a sit-in in front of the Presidential Office, the groups said. The July 25 rally would go ahead if Chen’s detention was extended, it said.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has proposed a signature drive to support Chen Shui-bian and has asked the court that he be released immediately.
DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday the party was in contact with prominent individuals to sign the petition.
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