More than 190 e-mailed bomb threats received since September last year were traced and identified as coming from abroad, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said on Saturday.
The bureau said all of the threats were false alarms and no bombs have been found by the police to date.
The string of bomb threats that began last year continued on Saturday. Hsinchu County’s Leofoo Village Theme Park, New Taipei City’s National Taiwan Library and Taichung’s Education Bureau all received similar threats, but police did not find any suspicious objects.
Photo courtesy of Hsinchu county police
The culprits have threatened to detonate bombs in areas such as public transport stations with the aim of causing chaos, the bureau said.
The e-mailed threats have been sent using the names of politicians, celebrities or anime characters to hamper the investigation, it said.
The culprits have endangered public safety “by putting the public in fear of injury to life, body, or property,” the bureau said, citing the Criminal Code.
If convicted, the perpetrators could be sentenced to up to two years in jail, it said.
The bureau advised people who receive such threats to remain calm and notify the police right away.
Police said the Internet protocol addresses the threats were traced to were from other countries, including the US, Japan and Indonesia, but not China.
Those responsible for the threats could have used a virtual private network (VPN), police said.
Investigators would try to identify the suspects by filtering the words they have used, police said.
Meanwhile, the bureau said it is continuing to target Chinese national Zhang Haichuan (張海川) in a separate case.
Zhang, who previously studied in Taiwan, allegedly sent 235 threatening e-mails to public transport systems in Taiwan between September 2021 and Tuesday, it said.
The Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office on June 14 last year asked Chinese law enforcement authorities to assist in solving the case.
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