The High Court’s Kaohsiung branch on Thursday sentenced a naval officer to one-and-a-half years in prison after convicting him of stealing classified documents from onboard the Republic of China Navy vessel Cheng De.
The officer can appeal the ruling.
Prosecutors in 2018 searched the residence of chief petty officer Hung Ching-cheng (洪景政), 40, in Kaohsiung, where he had stored downloaded materials from the Kang Ding-class frigate, 130 files of which were highly classified military documents.
Prosecutors, who requested the court to impose a severe sentence, charged Hung with leaking confidential military information, a breach of Article 22 of the Criminal Code of the Armed Forces (陸海空軍刑法), along with contravening provisions under the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法).
As justification for a harsh sentence, they pointed to the charge of “crimes of treason,” regarding which Article 103 of the military’s criminal code states: “Any person colluding with a foreign state or its agent with intent that such state or other state start war against the Republic of China shall be sentenced to death or life imprisonment... Any person preparing or conspiring to commit an offense specified in Paragraph 1 shall be sentenced to imprisonment not less than three years, but not more than 10 years.”
However, the court decided on a prison term of less than two years after only convicting Hung of lesser offenses — of obtaining computer files without authorization from another person.
Hung was in charge of the frigate’s telecommunications systems and used his duties to enter the vessel’s Combat Information Center, where he downloaded the high-level military and national security materials, investigators said, adding that the downloading started in 1998, still occurred in 2003 and ended in January 2017.
After prosecutors presented the evidence for his indictment, the navy discharged Hung.
A debt dispute between a restaurant owner and a criminal ring might be behind a bizarre cockroach attack at the Taipei eatery on Monday night while it was hosting a police gathering, Taipei Police Commissioner Chen Jia-chang (陳嘉昌) said yesterday. Preliminary findings of a police investigation into the case at the G House Taipei suggest that the unusual incident might have been directed at the restaurant’s owner, who allegedly owes money to the Bamboo Union, Chen said. The suspects were Bamboo Union members and there was no evidence indicating that the cockroaches were targeted at the police officers at the restaurant, he
Taiwan’s armed forces should closely monitor China’s development of a new tanker aircraft, as it would significantly boost the Chinese air force’s capability to carry out long-range raids, a military expert said on Wednesday. Ou Si-fu (歐錫富), a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said in an online article that China is developing a tanker variant of its Y-20 military transport aircraft, known as the Y-20U. The Y-20 has a maximum take-off weight of 220 tonnes and the tanker variant is expected to carry up to 60 tonnes of fuel, more than three times the maximum
QUARANTINE BLUNDER: The government should be responsible for a cluster infection at a hotel, as the cases have caused panic, DPP Legislator Chen Ming-wen said The Ministry of Transportation and Communications should make it mandatory for pilots and flight attendants, as well as their family members, to be vaccinated in view of a cluster of COVID-19 cases at the Novotel Taipei Taoyuan International Airport hotel, lawmakers said at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee yesterday. The cluster infection at the hotel had led to 28 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of Tuesday, including hotel workers, as well as China Airlines flight and cabin crew, and their family members. The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday tightened quarantine requirements for pilots and flight attendants, who must quarantine
TRAVELING WHILE CONTAGIOUS: The highest risk of infection is indoors, especially in settings where people take off their masks to eat and drink, an expert warned The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday posted a list of places visited by people who were recently diagnosed with COVID-19 while they were likely contagious, urging people who visited the sites at the same time to practice self-health management. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that confirmed case No. 1,129 — a woman in her 60s who works at Novotel Taipei Taoyuan International Airport, a designated quarantine facility, and tested positive on Friday — visited Chiayi between Friday last week and Monday. On the first day of her trip, she visited the Big Chiayi
RSS