A man suspected of murdering a Thai couple in Taiwan has turned himself in to authorities in Thailand, Taoyuan police said yesterday.
A spokesperson for the Jhongli District (中壢) police precinct told a news conference that the suspect, Wang Ta-hsien (王大賢) of Thailand, was accompanied by his father, who convinced his son to turn himself in to police in Chiang Mai, Thailand, yesterday morning.
The Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office and the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) are working with Thai authorities to extradite Wang to face charges, the Jhongli police said.
Photo: CNA
Taiwan does not have an official extradition treaty with Thailand, but Thailand has in previous cases agreed to extradite suspects to Taiwan for trial, CIB official Dustin Lee (李泱輯) said.
In the Taoyuan case, as the couple and the suspect are Thai, and as the couple’s families have filed a report in Thailand accusing Wang of murder, it is likely the suspect could be tried there, Lee said.
Wang was last seen with the couple surnamed Lee (李), who lived in New Taipei City, on Wednesday last week, Jhongli police said last week.
Based on a preliminary investigation, the couple operated a migrant worker recruitment agency in Taiwan with Wang as a business partner, it said.
Wang returned to Thailand on a flight out of Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Thursday last week, the same day he abandoned the couple’s vehicle, in which their bodies were found, in a parking lot near the Taoyuan High Speed Rail Station, it said.
All three were of Chinese descent and had met in Thailand, it said.
On Wednesday last week, they met at a dormitory for migrant workers in New Taipei City, apparently to discuss money matters, it said.
A dispute ensued, and Wang allegedly killed the couple and hid their bodies in the trunk of their vehicle, it said.
The couple, aged 30 to 40, were reported missing by family members on Thursday last week.
Meanwhile, in Bangkok, Royal Thai Police Commissioner Suwat Jangyodsuk said during a news conference yesterday that the suspect will stand trial in Thailand.
Thailand has jurisdiction in the case involving the suspect, he said.
As Thailand and Taiwan do not have any agreement of mutual legal assistance in criminal matters, Wang, 35, will not be extradited to Taiwan, said the Thai police chief.
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,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: