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Control Yuan approves report of flaws in 319 probe

The Control Yuan yesterday approved a report that found several flaws in the prosecutorial investigation into the March 19 shooting of then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) on the eve of the presidential election in 2004 (also known as the 319 incident).

The Tainan Public Prosecutor’s Office closed the case in 2005, saying the assassination attempt was the work of lone shooter Chen Yi-hsiung (陳義雄), who was found dead 10 days after the incident.

Control Yuan member Frank Wu (吳豐山), who has handled the case since Chen Yi-hsiung’s wife Lee Shu-chiang (李淑江) filed a petition last November, said that he hoped Special Investigation Panel prosecutors probing the incident would address the problems he had pointed out in the report.

Wu accused Tainan prosecutors of failing to substantiate their investigation results on four points.

The prosecutors said that Chen Yi-hsiung committed suicide because he feared punishment, but did not give a clear description of the death scene, Wu’s report said.

It also said that the Tainan prosecutors did not give a reasonable explanation of Chen Yi-hsiung’s motive.

“Tainan prosecutors said that Chen Yi-hsiung was unhappy with Chen Shui-bian and wanted to murder him … but the trajectory of the first bullet reconstructed by forensic scientist Henry Lee (李昌鈺) was targeted at Lu. The prosecutors failed to explain the discrepancy between the shooter’s motive and what actually happened,” the report said.

The prosecutors concluded that two bullets, one that grazed Chen Shui-bian’s stomach leaving a 13cm wound, and another that hit Lu in the knee, were fired by a single gun, but Henry Lee has said that it was difficult to determine whether they were fired by the same gun, the report said.

The shape of the two bullets found was inconsistent with a sketch provided by Tang Shou-yi (唐守義), who sold Chen Yi-hsiung a gun and ammunition, and the fact that the size of the two bullets did not fit the barrel of the handgun allegedly used in the shooting also cast doubt on the prosecutors’ conclusions, the report said.

Tainan prosecutors also failed to explain why Chen Shui-bian’s underwear and his trousers were undamaged after a bullet grazed his abdomen, and why there was no blood on them, it said.

Wu said he had questioned Minister of Justice Wang Ching-feng (王清峰), Henry Lee, former National Police Agency head Hou You-yi (侯友宜), Steve Chan (詹啟賢), superintendent of Chi Mei Hospital when Chen Shui-bian and Lu received treatment there, as well as consulting law experts, for the report, which took him a year to complete.
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