The High Court on Thursday sentenced a retired army lieutenant colonel surnamed Lan (藍) to two years and three months in jail for supplying China with the names and activities of personnel at intelligence agencies.
The verdict reversed an earlier ruling of a suspended sentence.
Lan, 60, was convicted of contravening the National Security Act (國家安全法) and the National Intelligence Services Act (國家情報工作法).
In May, the Pingtung District Court found Lan guilty, handing him a term of two years and six months, but suspended the sentence.
The Pingtung court said that Lan’s spying activities took place in 2005 and 2006, adding that his activities “did not cause real damage to Taiwan’s national security.”
The High Court ruled that “the penalty was too lenient and has no deterrent effect,” adding that “the leaked intelligence materials were highly sensitive and resulted in serious harm to Taiwan’s national security.”
His sentence includes a mandatory two-year prison term, while the further three month sscan be commuted to a fine.
Lan served in the Republic of China Army Logistics Command and held positions at the Ministry of National Defense before teaching at several military-affiliated universities.
He retired in 1996.
Investigators said that Lan in 2004 went to China to work for a Taiwanese business, with stints in Shanghai, Fuzhou, Shenzhen and Nanning.
Lan befriended Chinese government officials, including two men from intelligence agencies surnamed Li (李) and Huang (黃), the investigators said.
Li and Huang plied Lan with money and arranged sexual services in exchange for espionage work, the investigators said.
Lan returned to Taiwan for several months in 2005 and 2006, and obtained highly sensitive materials, including information on four officers at the National Security Bureau and the Military Intelligence Bureau: their ranks, work units, details of office and field activities, as well as their education and training background, the investigators said.
He also attempted to recruit military officers to spy for China, they said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching