Taipei police yesterday identified an Iraqi man as the main suspect in the murder of his Taiwanese wife’s elderly parents.
Ali Hammad Jumaah, who is married to a woman surnamed Hsiao (蕭), on Tuesday took their baby son to Japan, where he reportedly boarded a flight that was to arrive in Baghdad yesterday.
Criminal Investigation Bureau officials said that they are seeking international assistance to extradite Jumaah.
Photo: Copied by Chen En-hui, Taipei Times
However, officials said that it would be difficult, as Taiwan does not have extradition treaties or mutual judicial assistance agreements with Japan and Iraq.
The bodies of Hsiao’s parents were found yesterday morning in separate rooms at their residence in Taipei’s Shilin District (士林), each with a towel on their neck and showing signs of strangulation, investigators said.
Investigations focused on the couple’s son-in-law, as neighbors reported hearing loud arguments after Jumaah arrived at the residence on Monday night, said Chiu Chih-hung (邱智宏), deputy chief prosecutor at the Taipei Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office.
Jumaah and Hsiao were in a custody dispute over their one-year-old son, investigators said.
Jumaah and his son boarded a flight for Japan at 8am on Tuesday, the morning after the murders allegedly occurred, police said.
An arrest warrant and travel restriction were issued for Jumaah, but he had already left the country, Chiu said.
Hsiao was giving a police statement at about 4pm yesterday, when she received messages from Jumaah on Line telling her that he had arrived in Baghdad and that their son was safe with him, police said.
He sent a brief video, but refused to divulge any further information, they added.
Hsiao said that she met Jumaah when attending graduate school in the US, and they then moved to Japan, where Jumaah got a job teaching English.
They registered their marriage in Japan two years ago, but after their son was born, they began to have disputes and he physically abused her frequently, police quotes Hsiao as saying.
Late last year, she began to contemplate divorce, and her parents in March went to Japan to visit them, Hsiao told police.
Fearing for their safety, Hsiao brought her son to Taiwan and lived at her brother’s residence, while entrusting her son to the care of her parents, she said.
According to her testimony, Jumaah came to Taiwan and went to see his son at the Hsiao residence over the weekend, where there was an argument over custody rights.
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