The Ministry of Justice yesterday said that former World Bank vice president Justin Lin (林毅夫), who defected to China in 1979 by swimming from Kinmen to China’s Fujian Province, was still a fugitive wanted on treason charges by the Kinmen branch of the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office.
Lin’s case is being handled by the prosecutors’ office, after the military’s court-martial system was supplanted by the criminal justice system yesterday, the ministry said.
Lin’s case was among the more than 400 cases transferred from military’s jurisdiction to the civilian judicial system yesterday, the ministry added.
The ministry said 74 military prisoners and detainees were sent from a military prison in Greater Tainan to civilian prisons yesterday, as 298 military criminal cases under investigations are transferred to civilian prosecutors’ offices.
Meanwhile, the Judicial Yuan said 157 cases with a total of 167 defendants were transferred from military courts to civilian courts yesterday.
The transferal of military jurisdiction to civilian systems has been carried out in two stages after an amendment to the Code of Court Martial Procedure (軍事審判法) was passed by the legislature in August last year.
The push to overhaul the court martial system was prompted by the death of army corporal Hung Chung-chiu (洪仲丘) on July 4 last year following a series of alleged irregularities, disregard for military rules and procedures, and abuses of power.
Under the revised court-martial code, all service personnel will be subject to the civilian justice system during peacetime.
The first stage took place on Aug. 16 last year. A total of 259 military prisoners and detainees were sent from a military prison in Greater Tainan to 11 civilian prisons, and hundreds of military criminal cases were transferred to civilian courts.
The second stage took place yesterday, marking the end of operations for the military judiciary in peacetime.
Additional reporting by CNA
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,