The High Court on Thursday upheld the conviction of a Chinese man who had ordered the killing of four people at sea when he was captain of a Taiwanese fishing boat, and lengthened his prison sentence.
In the fourth appeal of the case, Wang Fengyu (汪峰裕) was sentenced to 26 years in prison on four counts of murder and was fined NT$100,000 (US$3,114) for illegal possession of a weapon, a statement released by the Kaohsiung branch of the High Court said on Thursday.
The case dates back to 2012, when Wang was captain of the Kaohsiung-registered longliner Ping Shin No. 101 (屏新101號), which had allegedly encountered suspected pirates off Somalia on Sept. 29 that year.
Photo: Taipei Times
Wang had ordered two Pakistani security guards who were on board to kill the four men who had approached on a smaller vessel, the court statement said.
The boats were in the Indian Ocean, about 595km southeast of the Somalian capital of Mogadishu, the court said.
In a YouTube video that supposedly captured the killings at sea, a cluster of four boats could be seen in the area.
On the large fishing boat, two men were seen firing shots at people in the water. Then the person at the helm of the fishing boat took one of the guns and began shooting at the people in the water, who had fallen overboard when their boat was rammed.
Wang was arrested in August 2020 after he arrived in Kaohsiung on another vessel.
He was found guilty of the four murders when the case was tried in the Kaohsiung District Court the following year.
He was sentenced to 26 years in prison, but he appealed the ruling, which was subsequently upheld by the High Court.
The case was then taken to the Supreme Court, which ordered a retrial in 2022, citing discrepancies in the evidence.
Since then, there have been multiple appeals and retrials, with the convictions swinging between one and four counts of murder.
Thursday’s ruling by the Kaohsiung branch of the High Court extended the 13-year prison sentence handed to Wang in the first two retrials by the same court, when he was found guilty of only one count of murder.
The latest ruling can still be appealed.
No credible information ever surfaced about the identity or whereabouts of the two Pakistanis who were working on the Ping Shin No. 101 at the time of the murders.
Reports about the victims have also been sketchy, as no bodies were ever recovered.
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