The Taipei District Court yesterday released suspected spy Wu Chang-yu (吳彰裕) and his accomplice Lin Po-hung (林柏宏) on NT$2 million (US$66,000) and NT$500,000 bail respectively.
The Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau and the Taipei Prosecutors’ Office detained Wu, an associate professor at the Central Police University teaching Chinese political history, on Sept. 29 on suspicion that he was passing along information on followers of Falun Gong and Tibetan independence activists in Taiwan.
Lin was a police officer at the National Police Agency’s foreign affairs department.
Photo: CNA
According to the Taipei District Court, Wu was asked by a Chinese national, nicknamed “Hsiao Chang” (小張), to ask Lin to look into the immigration records of another Chinese national named Cui Weiping (崔衛平).
The court’s report said Cui is a professor at the Beijing Film Academy and had attended the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. She recently also criticized Chinese authorities on Twitter for jailing a peaceful demonstrator.
Cui was invited to attend the Association for Asia Studies’ 62nd annual meeting in the US, but was barred from attending by Beijing. This was the third such interdiction by Beijing against Cui’s travel plans to the US, the report said.
The court said Wu had asked Lin many times for personal information, including the residence address in the US and recent activities of a certain Tibetan who was once a student at Central Police University.
Wu had also asked Lin about the health and political leadership of the Dalai Lama, the report said.
While the district court initially approved prosecutors’ request that Wu be detained, it rejected their request that Lin also be detained.
Wu then filed a complaint with the High Court over his detention, while prosecutors filed a complaint with the High Court over the district court’s rejection of their request to detain Lin.
The High Court returned the case to the Taipei District Court and the trial convened yesterday morning.
After four hours of deliberation, the district court decided to release Wu and Lin on bail.
Translated by Jake Chung, Staff Writer
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