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.
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