A curtain of secrecy descended on the case of fugitive Rebar Group chairman Wang You-theng (王又曾) in Los Angeles on Tuesday when a US federal immigration judge ordered his deportation hearing closed and forbade anybody involved in the case from disclosing any related information.
Within minutes of the beginning of Wang's first appearance in court since he was interdicted on his entry into Los Angeles airport on Feb. 2, Judge Rose Peters issued a "do not disclose order" at the request of Wang's lawyer, Franklin Nelson.
As a result, neither US government spokesmen nor lawyers taking part in the case can say anything publicly or privately about the case as long as the no-disclosure order is retained.
Comprehensive
The order would extend, for instance, to disclosure of the date of Wang's next appearance in the court, located within an immigration detention center in San Pedro Island south of Los Angeles. It is believed that the next hearing will take place on March 6 or March 7.
Tuesday's hearing, called a "calendar hearing," basically dealt with procedural matters and was scheduled to last only five to 10 minutes.
The prosecution and defense will not begin to argue the merits of the case until the "individual hearing" in March.
Wang's wife, Wang Chin She-ying (王金世英), a US citizen traveling on a US passport, did not attend Tuesday's hearing, a spokesperson for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office of the Department of Homeland Security, Virginia Kice, told reporters.
Four people
Shawn Chou, a lawyer working with the Taiwan press corps, told the Taipei Times that Kice had said only four people were in attendance: Peters, Nelson, Wang attorney Tiffany Tai (
Calls by the Taipei Times to Wang's lawyers were not returned.
Officials from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) in Washington could offer no information on the case. A late cable from the Taiwan office in Los Angeles to Washington offered scant information, senior TECRO officials said.
They did say that no lawyers representing Taiwan were present at the hearing, despite speculation by reporters at the scene that an Asian woman at the detention center at the time of the hearing might have been a Taiwanese lawyer surnamed Lin, Chou said.
It was not clear why the judge ordered the hearing closed.
Kice told reporters that hearings could be ordered closed if they dealt with asylum requests, sensitive information the parties did not want disclosed, or matters of national security. It was hard to see which reason could be used in Wang's case.
Asylum usually pertains to an oppressive or authoritarian regime from which a detainee seeks to escape persecution or death while the Wang case appears to raise no national security issues.
However, Chou said that his "guess" was that "Mr Wang filed some sort of protective relief, or asylum motion," adding that this was "puzzling to outsiders."
The closing of the hearing was a huge disappointment to Taiwan-ese reporters. Over the Presi-dent's Day holiday weekend, Kice and Lynn Tso (左敏琳), a reporter for TVBS, had worked out a pool system in which six media representatives would attend the hearing and report back to journalists who could not gain entry.
But when the reporters appeared at 7:40am, 20 minutes before the 8am start time, Kice told them that Nelson had called her at 9pm the night before asking for the hearing be closed to the press.
Kice said she believed that such a decision should be made by a judge.
Kice went into the court, but returned a few minutes after the hearing began to tell the reporters that they would be barred from the hearing.
She said that the prosecution did not raise an objection to Nelson's "non-disclosure" motion.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday declared emergency martial law, accusing the opposition of being “anti-state forces intent on overthrowing the regime” amid parliamentary wrangling over a budget bill. “To safeguard a liberal South Korea from the threats posed by North Korea’s communist forces and to eliminate anti-state elements plundering people’s freedom and happiness, I hereby declare emergency martial law,” Yoon said in a live televised address to the nation. “With no regard for the livelihoods of the people, the opposition party has paralysed governance solely for the sake of impeachments, special investigations, and shielding their leader from justice,” he
CHINA: The activities come amid speculation that Beijing might launch military exercises in response to Lai’s recent visit to Pacific allies The Ministry of National Defense (MND) yesterday said China had nearly doubled the number of its warships operating around the nation in the previous 24 hours, ahead of what security sources expect would be a new round of war games. China’s military activities come amid speculation Beijing might organize military drills around the nation in response to President William Lai’s (賴清德) recent visit to Pacific allies, including stops in Hawaii and Guam, a US territory. Lai returned from the week-long trip on Friday night. Beijing has held two rounds of war games around Taiwan this year, and sends ships and military planes
China is trying to set a "red line" for the incoming Trump administration and US allies by stepping up military activities in the region, a senior Taiwan security official said, including likely war games this weekend around Taiwan. China has held two rounds of war games around Taiwan so far this year, and its forces operate nearby on a daily basis. The official confirmed concerns expressed by other security officials in the region who have previously told Reuters that China could launch new drills to coincide with Taiwan President William Lai's (賴清德) trip to the Pacific this week which included visits to
‘UNITED FRONT’: Beijing provides Internet ‘influencers’ with templates and directions, such as criticizing Taiwanese politicians, the rapper said Taiwanese rapper Chen Po-yuan (陳柏源) in a video showed how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) bribes Taiwanese online influencers in its “united front” efforts to shape Taiwanese opinions. The video was made by YouTuber “Pa Chiung (八炯)” and published online on Friday. Chen in the video said that China’s United Front Work Department provided him with several templates and materials — such as making news statements — with some mentioning Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) politician Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) and New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) and asking him to write a song criticizing the Democratic Progressive Party. He said he had produced
RSS