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.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS