Police have rescued 32 people who were kidnapped and forcibly detained by a criminal ring in Taoyuan, while subsequent searches found the bodies of three people who were killed after being tortured.
Police said that eight suspected members of the ring were arrested during the raid on Thursday, and evidence and telephone records indicated that they belonged to the same criminal ring that was raided in New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水) on Tuesday.
Police rescued 26 people and captured eight suspects in that raid.
Photo: CNA
The torture practices, the three corpses and the use of handcuffs and other torture devices have prompted police and local media to describe it as a “Cambodia-style kidnapping and fraud operation.”
During the raid in Taoyuan’s Jhongli District (中壢), police seized handcuffs, plastic wrist binders, electroshock weapons, metal rods and other devices believed to have been used to torture the victims, all of whom had bruises and injuries from being beaten, while some had also been burned with cigarettes, the New Taipei City Police Department Criminal Investigation Corps told a news conference yesterday.
Police said they recovered the bodies of three victims — two men and a woman — in a mountainous area of Taoyuan’s Kueishan District (龜山) and in Nantou County.
According to testimony and witness accounts, one victim allegedly was beaten and suffered serious injuries resulting in death, another reportedly could not bear the torture and tried to escape, and was killed when jumping out of a window. The third allegedly died of an overdose, after gang members fed them narcotics to incapacitate them and prevent them from fleeing.
Police said they were investigating if the criminal ring had any connections to known organized crime syndicates.
The 32 victims rescued were emaciated with signs of malnutrition after they were only permitted to eat one meal of instant noodles per day, police said, adding that the victims were taken to hospitals for emergency treatment.
Evidence indicated that the Taoyuan ring was instructed by Lu Cheng-yi (呂政儀), who was arrested in the Tamsui raid on Tuesday, police said.
Lu and the others arrested are facing charges of murder, fraud, assault causing injury, illegal confinement and related offenses, police said.
Victims said they applied for high-paying jobs and were invited to the buildings in Tamsui and Taoyuan, but were kidnapped and forced to hand over their IDs and personal belongings, including bank account books.
They were then ordered to make telephone calls as part of a fraud operation, they said.
LONG FLIGHT: The jets would be flown by US pilots, with Taiwanese copilots in the two-seat F-16D variant to help familiarize them with the aircraft, the source said The US is expected to fly 10 Lockheed Martin F-16C/D Block 70/72 jets to Taiwan over the coming months to fulfill a long-awaited order of 66 aircraft, a defense official said yesterday. Word that the first batch of the jets would be delivered soon was welcome news to Taiwan, which has become concerned about delays in the delivery of US arms amid rising military tensions with China. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the initial tranche of the nation’s F-16s are rolling off assembly lines in the US and would be flown under their own power to Taiwan by way
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
OBJECTS AT SEA: Satellites with synthetic-aperture radar could aid in the detection of small Chinese boats attempting to illegally enter Taiwan, the space agency head said Taiwan aims to send the nation’s first low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite into space in 2027, while the first Formosat-8 and Formosat-9 spacecraft are to be launched in October and 2028 respectively, the National Science and Technology Council said yesterday. The council laid out its space development plan in a report reviewed by members of the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee. Six LEO satellites would be produced in the initial phase, with the first one, the B5G-1A, scheduled to be launched in 2027, the council said in the report. Regarding the second satellite, the B5G-1B, the government plans to work with private contractors
RSS