For the second time in two weeks, a Spanish court yesterday granted China’s request to extradite 93 Chinese and Taiwanese fraud suspects to China based on Beijing’s so-called “one China” principle, again raising the ire of Taiwanese officials.
The government expressed its regret and discontent over the Spanish National Court’s decision to send the suspects to China, only days after making a similar decision on Dec. 15 to deport 121 fraud suspects — including some Taiwanese — to Beijing, the Mainland Affairs Council said in a news release yesterday.
A total of 269 suspects were reportedly arrested in connection with the case in December last year.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is still trying to determine how many of the 214 suspects pending deportation are Taiwanese, the ministry said.
The deportation orders were made in accordance with an extradition treaty signed between Beijing and Madrid in 2005 and ratified in 2006.
The council yesterday again urged China to honor the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement (海峽兩岸共同打擊犯罪及司法互助協議), which was signed in 2009 to promote bilateral cooperation with Taiwan.
“Only cooperation truly assists our fight against telecom fraud crimes and our efforts to punish transgressors and safeguard the rights of people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait,” the council said.
The agreement was shelved even before President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office in May 20 last year.
Since April last year, a total of 288 Taiwanese have been deported to China from various nations — including Kenya, Malaysia, Cambodia, Armenia, Vietnam and Indonesia — for alleged telecom fraud targeting people in China, council data showed.
On Thursday, 44 Taiwanese fraud suspects deported from Kenya were given prison terms by a Chinese court, with two receiving the heaviest sentence of 15 years.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a