New Taipei City prosecutors yesterday questioned Cheng Chieh (鄭捷), the 21-year-old suspect in the nation’s first deadly subway knife attack, which occurred on Wednesday last week.
Prosecutors said they questioned Cheng about his interactions with his family and whether he has ever encountered setbacks during the course of his schooling, in an attempt to gain an understanding of his psychological condition.
During the session, Cheng reiterated that he had a motive for the killings since he was in elementary school and said that he did not want to see his parents at this time.
Photo: CNA
He did not respond to questions about problems with his family.
Prosecutors said Cheng’s answers differed little from his earlier statements about “plans for doing something big,” plans he said he had harbored since he was in elementary school. He said he particularly wanted to kill those he hated.
The detention center said that since Cheng was taken into custody on Thursday last week, his daily routine has been normal and his mood has not changed. He has made no specific requests to the center and his parents have not visited him.
Four people were killed and 24 injured in the incident on Taipei’s MRT.
As part of the investigation into the case, prosecutors have already questioned some of the injured and witnesses over the past few days, and do not rule out questioning Cheng’s parents to better understand his background.
Prosecutors on Thursday also consulted with National Taiwan University Hospital on whether Cheng should undergo a pyschological evaluation.
In related developments, MRT operator Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it held a Taoist spiritual cleansing rite yesterday on the MRT cars where the stabbings took place.
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