The Taiwan High Court’s Prosecutors Office yesterday said it has asked the Taiwan District Prosecutors’ Office to look into former minister of national defense Chen Chao-min (陳肇敏) and six military officers’ alleged criminal responsibility over the wrongful execution of an air force private for the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl 15 years ago.
The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special Investigation Panel (SIP) concluded on May 24 that Chiang Kuo-ching (江國慶) was not guilty of the crime for which he was executed in 1997, but it did not issue indictments against Chen or the other officers believed to have played a role in Chiang’s interrogation and coerced confession.
At the time, the SIP said although military prosecutors had coerced Chiang into confessing by torturing him, the military officers could not be indicted because the 10-year statute of limitations had expired.
The Taiwan High Court’s Prosecutors Office said it has ordered the district prosecutors to look into whether Chen and six officers violated Article 302 of the Criminal Code — illegal detention resulting in homicide — and Article 125 — abuse of prosecutorial authority causing homicide.
The Taiwan High Court’s Prosecutors Office said there were nine officers involved in the incident, but because one has died and one is still serving in the military and is being investigated by military prosecutors, it only ordered the district prosecutors to investigate Chen and the remaining six.
Prosecutors previously sought indictments for a violation of Article 304, regarding coercion, which has a statute of limitations of 10 years.
Article 125 and Article 302 have statutes of limitations of 20 years to 30 years.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift