Kaohsiung Prison Warden Chen Shih-chih (陳世志) yesterday threatened to take legal action against the Chinese-language Next Magazine for publishing what he said were unsubstantiated reports on the prison hostage drama that ended with six deaths on Thursday last week.
“Regarding Next Magazine’s unfounded reports, I have entrusted the prison’s legal consultant to send a legal attestation letter to the publication demanding that it make the necessary corrections to the reports within a week,” Chen said. “Otherwise, I will file a lawsuit against it and ask for NT$5 million [US$158,000] in compensation for tarnishing my reputation.”
Chen made the remarks two days after the magazine accused the warden in its latest issue, published on Tuesday, of trying to conceal the actual events, including the exact number of inmates involved in the jailbreak attempt and whether they had committed suicide, as the prison claims.
The inmates had held Chen and another prison official hostage for nearly 14 hours.
Retired coroner Kao Ta-cheng (高大成) has questioned the prison’s claim that all six inmates killed themselves.
Kao said one of the more reasonable explanations was that the six had offered a prison official a bribe to help them escape prison, but that the person changed their mind after the inmates took hostages and decided to eliminate them.
“Otherwise, how is it possible that all six prisoners who claimed they were victims of mistrials would unanimously agree to end the drama by shooting themselves?” Kao said.
Kao urged investigators to examine the firearms the six allegedly used to kill themselves for suspicious fingerprints, especially those belonging to Chen.
A delivery truck driver who was inside the prison when the siege occurred also told reporters that he “heard the warden telling the inmates to kill themselves.”
Dismissing the speculation, Chen said that all six prisoners came from financially disadvantaged families and based on the meager wage they made at the prison, there was no way they could have had the money to bribe a prison employee.
He also denied that there were more than six prisoners involved in the failed jailbreak attempt, adding that the driver later called him to explain that his remarks had been taken out of context.
As for Kao, Chen said he would also take legal action against the retired coroner should he continue to question his account of events.
“The compensation I demand from the magazine will be donated in full to the prison’s charitable fund and be used to help financially deprived prisoners purchase daily necessities,” Chen said.
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,