The Keelung District Prosecutors’ Office, with the help of US authorities, indicted five suspects who attempted to smuggle 16 firearms into the country, the office said yesterday.
The five Taiwanese involved were indicted for contravening the Controlling Guns, Ammunition and Knives Act (槍砲彈藥刀械管制條例) and the Smuggling Penalty Act (懲治走私條例), it said.
A local court also granted a motion to hold the men incommunicado, the office added.
Photo copied by Lu Yun-feng, Taipei Times
US Customs and Border Protection in May found packages containing firearms components at a Miami mail processing facility, which were about to be shipped to an address in Keelung, it said.
They were able to seize four of the packages, but one was sent to Taiwan, it added.
US Homeland Security Investigations and the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) reported the case to the prosecutors’ office, and a task force was set up to investigate, the office said.
At the beginning of June, the task force staked out the address in Keelung, which turned out to be a motorbike shop, and arrested the main suspect, 36-year-old man surnamed Hsieh (謝), and four others, the office said.
The prosecutors’ office found that Hsieh had a dual citizenship in Taiwan and the US, and had legally obtained the guns abroad before they were taken apart and hidden among hardware tools to smuggle into Taiwan, the CIB said.
Prosecutors needed the firearms seized by US authorities from the four other packages as evidence, and, in an unprecedented move, the Ministry of Justice used the Agreement on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters between Taiwan and the US to ask for assistance.
Representatives of the office and the CIB headed to the US to collect the evidence, the office said, adding that it was the first time Taiwanese officials retrieved evidence under the agreement, which was signed in 2002.
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