Henry Lee (李昌鈺), a US-based forensic scientist, said on Monday that the shooting of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) on the eve of the presidential election in 2004 was a minor case, but it created a lot of pressure.
The shooting on March 19, 2004, in which Chen’s abdomen was wounded, was a minor case compared with others he had dealt with, such as war crimes in Croatia and Bosnia and a review of former US president John Kennedy’s assassination, Lee said at a press conference in Los Angeles on the eighth anniversary of the “319 Incident.”
However, Lee said he faced great pressure, which was mostly unnecessary, in the Chen case because of its political implications.
Photo: CNA
Lee was asked to assist in the investigation of the incident, in which a bullet grazed Chen’s abdomen and another slightly injured then-vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) at a presidential election campaign motorcade in Tainan.
In a report submitted in August 2004, Lee concluded that the shooting was not a planned assassination attempt, in which case “a more powerful weapon than a homemade pistol would have been used.”
Some pundits said the incident helped Chen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) gain sympathy votes that earned him a razor-thin victory over the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) candidate, Lien Chan (連戰).
On Monday, Lee gave a Power-Point presentation that detailed aspects of the shooting, such as the bullets used, their trajectory and the type of gun from which they were shot.
As a forensic expert, Lee said, his work is to review all available evidence and reach a conclusion.
He said the bullets that wounded Chen and Lu came from the same gun, which was traced to the man who made it, Tang Shou-yi (唐守義).
It was last used by Chen Yi-hsiung (陳義雄), who died under suspicious circumstances, Lee said.
Chen Yi-hsiung’s body was found in a pond on March 28, 2004. Lee said the body was cremated almost immediately after death, so it could not be determined whether Chen Yi-hsiung had died in the water.
The shooting case was officially closed after investigators concluded that Chen Yi-hsiung had acted alone.
Last week, Lu called on the government to reopen the case, and the DPP legislative caucus on Monday proposed setting up a special review committee to re-examine the incident.
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