Yen Ming-wei (顏銘緯), the student who hurled a book at President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) last week, has been notified that police want to question him because at least two people are separately suing him, alleging he incurred physical harm and obstructed officers from discharging their duties, National Police Agency (NPA) Director-General Wang Cho-chiun (王卓鈞) said.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chiu Chih-wei (邱志偉) questioned Wang at the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee meeting yesterday, asking him why the police summoned Yen to the police station when the Presidential Office had already stated that the president would take no legal action against him.
Wang confirmed that the Taipei City Police Department’s Zhongshan Precinct has asked Yen to report to the precinct on Oct. 7.
“This is not a question of whether the president personally wants to hold [Yen] responsible,” Wang said in response to Chiu’s question.
“The head of the Shilin military police station, who was in charge of the president’s security on the day of the incident, is suing Yen for obstructing an officer in the discharge of their duties. And there is also another person surnamed Lee (李) taking legal action against Yen, saying that the book hit his stomach and he had undergone a medical examination because of it,” Wang said.
When asked whether the book hit the president, Wang said he “could not be sure about the details.”
Chiu then asked him whether a charge of physical harm is possible if the book came into contact with Lee after it first hit the president.
Wang said that causing physical harm is an offense that is indictable only if a complaint is filed.
“Even if the two parties eventually reach an agreement, the prosecution unit that has accepted the complaint would still have to [establish a case and refer it to the court]. It does not have the right to end the case on its own,” Wang said.
According to a report by the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper), a photograph taken of the notification sent to Yen from the police precinct showed that the reason for the notification was “for investigating a case involving the violation of the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法)” and the date of issuance was Saturday last week, the day after Yen threw a copy of Formosa Betrayed, written by former US diplomat George Kerr, at Ma.
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