Three former officials from the Military Intelligence Bureau were yesterday sentenced to at least 10 months in prison after being found guilty of developing a spy ring and passing secret intelligence to China after their retirement.
The Taipei District Court sentenced retired colonel Chang Chao-jan (張超然) to 18 months in prison, while retired major general Yueh Chih-chung (岳志忠) and retired colonel Chou Tien-tzu (周天慈) were sentenced to 10 months and 14 months respectively.
The verdict can be appealed.
Photo: Chien Jung-feng, Taipei Times
Another retired colonel implicated in the case, Wang Ta-wang (王大旺), was found not guilty and acquitted due to a lack of evidence, the court said.
The four former military officers in February 2021 were indicted by the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office on charges of contravening the National Intelligence Service Act (國家情報工作法) and the National Security Act (國家安全法).
The charges included leaking information about Taiwan’s intelligence sources, organizations and personnel, and developing a spy ring on behalf of China.
Prosecutors alleged that Chang, Yueh and Chou were recruited by Chinese intelligence, which offered business incentives, cash rewards and free trips, after their retirement.
Chang was recruited when he traveled to China to help a former colleague who was arrested by the Chinese authorities in 1999, the indictment said.
He was then instructed to arrange trips for other retired military intelligence officers to visit China. These people would either be asked or “forced” to provide sensitive information.
Yueh, who was in charge of China-related intelligence work when working at the bureau, was recruited by Chang in 2012 when he wanted to visit relatives in China, but was worried about being arrested by the Chinese authorities because of his former work, prosecutors said.
Chang assured Yueh that he could return to Taiwan safely, as long as he gave intelligence information to a Chinese intelligence officer, which Yueh agreed to do.
Meanwhile, Chou was said to have begun working for the Chinese authorities after becoming involved in a real-estate dispute in China’s Hainan Province that year.
Wang was also suspected of having been recruited through Chang, and gave information about his colleagues during a trip to China, prosecutors said.
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
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
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