The New Taipei District Court yesterday ordered that Li Guohui (李國輝), who was being held on suspicion of arson, be remanded in custody, after he was arrested the previous day on suspicion of starting a deadly apartment fire on Wednesday night.
Prosecutors said that 49-year-old Li confessed to having lit the blaze at an apartment building in the city’s Jhonghe District (中和) that killed nine people and left two with burns.
Details released by the authorities showed that the dead included people from Indonesia and Myanmar, along with a police officer surnamed Wang (王), 42.
During questioning, Li at first denied that he had started the fire, police said, adding that he only confessed after investigators presented evidence from a surveillance camera.
The video images show him buying gasoline at a local gas station and pouring a liquid on the third-floor stairwell of the apartment building, prosecutors said.
Li was quoted by prosecutors as admitting to having used a cigarette lighter to light the fire, as he was embroiled in a dispute with a resident of the building surnamed Hu (胡), who is also an ethnic Chinese from Myanmar.
Li said he had a drug habit and had taken amphetamines, prosecutors said.
“I heard strange voices in my head, urging me to do it,” they quoted Li as saying.
Investigators said Li did not have medical records of treatment for mental conditions, but was a repeat offender and had been arrested for arson twice previously, in May and in June.
Meanwhile Lien Chiu-hsiang (連秋香), 56, who owns the fourth and fifth floor of the apartment building, said illegal wooden structures dividing the floors into little rooms were already in place when last year she paid NT$42 million (US$1.4 million) for the second to the fifth floor of the building and the upper floors of an adjacent building.
Lien said that she should not be held liable for what happened.
However, prosecutors said they intend to press charges of negligence resulting in death and violations against public safety, and have imposed a fine of NT$300,000.
Lien had made much higher profits than other owners in the area, investigators said, adding that they had estimated that she collected NT$170,000 to NT$200,000 in rent each month.
The higher income was possible because the building’s floor area of 40 ping (132m2) had been subdivided into 14 rooms of 3 to 4 ping each for individual rental, which investigators said was illegal, violated building codes and created a fire hazard because the dividers were made of wood.
Democratic Progressive Party legislators Chiang Yung-chang (江永昌) and Wu Yu-chin (吳玉琴) yesterday convened a news conference with housing rights advocates, who accused local governments of negligence and lax law enforcement, which they said meant that tragedies such as the one in Jhonghe would be repeated.
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