Police on Friday seized 24 guns, 1,200 bullet cartridges and narcotics in a series of raids in New Taipei City.
A 29-year-old man surnamed Cheng (鄭), who is allegedly a member of the Heavenly Way Alliance, has been placed in detention and might face firearms and drug charges, the Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office said in a news release yesterday.
Two dozen guns were confiscated, in addition to 14.33kg of mephedrone, 969 bags of ketamine mixed with amphetamine and other substances, and 40 bags of ketamine, the office said.
Photo: CNA
Authorities suspect that Cheng was providing guns for other members of the gang and led a drug ring that operated in New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水), it said.
Two of Cheng’s alleged associates, one surnamed Pan (潘) and another surnamed Wang (王), were released on bail of NT$70,000 and NT$20,000 respectively, the office said, adding that a fourth suspect is still at large.
Law enforcement officials said that intelligence from another investigation revealed that the Heavenly Way Alliance might be storing arms in New Taipei City.
The Criminal Investigation Division, Taipei’s Zhongshan Police Precinct and the National Police Bureau’s Special Task Unit then created a task force to organize the raids, they said.
Police said that Cheng was arrested in an apartment in Tamsui that contained drugs, while a shed on a property he rented contained one cache of guns, and a second cache of guns was found when police searched Wang’s home.
Rifles, submachine guns and semi-automatic shotguns were among the weapons recovered during the raids, the Taipei Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division said on Friday.
The serial numbers and design suggest that some of the guns were manufactured in an illegal arms factory in the Philippines, police said.
The pistols were mostly genuine Beretta and Ceska zbrojovka weapons, although one handgun was likley created in an illegal workshop, police said.
Additional reporting by Chen Chia-yu
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods