The head of a Tainan temple and seven others were indicted on Friday by prosecutors investigating gun attacks on a campaign headquarters and a business run by a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) official in November last year.
Six of the people who were indicted — Kung Hsiang-chih (孔祥志), Yang Chan-hua (楊展華), Lee Chi-han (李奇漢), Kuo Chien-chang (郭建彰), Tsai Chin-lang (蔡金郎) and Hsieh Chun-cheng (謝俊誠) — were detained, while Wang Wen-tsung (王文宗), chairman of Cihji Temple in Tainan’s Syuejia District (學甲), was released on NT$700,000 bail, the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office said.
An eighth suspect — Hung Cheng-chun (洪政軍), who was extradited from China in February — is serving a nine-year prison sentence for a separate firearms offense.
Photo: Wang Chieh, Taipei Times
All eight had been indicted over their alleged involvement in twin attacks on the campaign headquarters of Hsieh Shu-fan (謝舒凡) and a business belonging to former DPP Central Executive Committee member Kuo Tsai-chin (郭再欽) in the run-up to last year’s local elections.
On Nov. 10 last year, police responding to a 3am report of exploding firecrackers arrived to find a steel shutter on Hsieh Shu-fan’s campaign headquarters in Syuejia riddled with about 30 bullet holes.
Surveillance footage recovered by police showed a man — who prosecutors identified as Kung — firing shots from a gun into Hsieh Shu-fan’s office before departing on a scooter.
The same person had shot up a technology firm run by Kuo Tsai-chin shortly before arriving at Hsieh Shu-fan’s campaign headquarters, prosecutors said.
Neither location was occupied at the time of the shootings and no injuries were reported.
Hsieh Shu-fan, a DPP candidate whose father is former independent Tainan city councilor Hsieh Tsai-wang (謝財旺), was elected to the Tainan City Council on Nov. 26.
Kung, a Syuejia resident with a criminal record, was tracked down in China and extradited to Taiwan in February along with Hung.
Prosecutors said that Wang and Hung, a close associate of the temple chairman, masterminded the shootings and recruited Kung to carry them out.
Wang and Hung have denied involvement in the shootings.
The five others indicted on Friday have been accused of managing other tasks, such as supplying the MP5 gun allegedly used in the attack and providing Kung with the scooter.
Hung and Kung, who prosecutors said were smuggled into China after fleeing Taiwan by boat in November last year, were arrested by Chinese police in Quanzhou on Jan. 18.
Prosecutors said that Wang subsidized Hung during the latter’s time in hiding, saying that the temple boss visited China in December last year and in January to meet with him.
The motives behind the shootings were still being investigated, prosecutors said, adding that there are other potential indictments in the case.
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