The Supreme Prosecutors' Office yesterday made public the report of forensics expert Henry Lee (李昌鈺) into the March 19 assassination attempt on President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), but 13 key questions went unanswered.
"Many of the details of the shooting and the scenarios were not able to be reconstructed because of the fact that the crime scene was not fully preserved, and because of the lack of information in local investigative protocols," Lee wrote in his report.
"However, certain facts and conclusions were able to be determined based on a re-examination of the physical evidence, the past experience of the investigators and the results of the forensic test results by other individuals and agencies," Lee wrote.
The questions that went unanswered in the report included the make of the gun, the number of guns involved and the location of the assailant at the time of firing.
The report was a virtual repeat of the material that Lee presented to the public at a press conference on April 10 during his investigation.
At that time, Lee confirmed that Chen had sustained a "fresh" wound to his abdomen. He also confirmed that Lu's kneecap had been grazed by a bullet fired from outside the Jeep in which she and Chen had been traveling through Tainan City on the final day of their election campaign.
However, Lee said it was difficult to reconstruct the scene because it had not been preserved.
With the Taiwan High Court having delivered its verdict on Thursday on one of two lawsuits on the validity of the presidential election, questions surfaced over why the prosecutor's office had made public Lee's report at this time.
Asked for comment, Supreme Prosecutor's Office Chief Prosecutor Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫) said he had no idea why this was the case.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) plans to make advanced 3-nanometer chips in Japan, stepping up its semiconductor manufacturing roadmap in the country in a triumph for Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s technology ambitions. TSMC is to adopt cutting-edge technology for its second wafer fab in Kumamoto, company chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said yesterday. That is an upgrade from an original blueprint to produce 7-nanometer chips by late next year, people familiar with the matter said. TSMC began mass production at its first plant in Japan’s Kumamoto in late 2024. Its second fab, which is still under construction, was originally focused on
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
RSS