The High Court yesterday sentenced retired major Lee Hai-peng (李海鵬) to 12 years in prison for selling national secrets to China in a retrial after the Supreme Court struck down the original conviction.
Yesterday’s ruling can be appealed.
The 70-year-old defendant’s jail term was four times longer than the three-year sentence he received in the first ruling, the verdict showed.
Photo: Taipei Times
Lee Hai-peng’s sons, Captain Lee Yu-sheng (李輿聖) and Sergeant Lee Chu-hsiang (李楚庠), were found guilty of compromising military secrets under the Criminal Code of the Armed Forces (陸海空軍刑法), the verdict said.
Lee Yu-sheng was sentenced to two years and one month in prison, a month shorter than the previous sentence, and Lee Chu-hsiang was sentenced to 10 years and six months, more than the previous sentence of two years and two months, it said.
Major Lee Wen-sheng (李文生), another codefendant, described as a friend of Lee Yu-sheng, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, longer than the previous sentence of three years and two months.
Lee Hai-peng joined the tourism industry following his retirement from the military in 1990 and frequently traveled to China for business, where he was approached and recruited by Chinese intelligence officers, the verdict said.
Lee Hai-peng then recruited the codefendants to obtain highly classified military secrets for China for about six years before being discovered, it said.
The Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office had verified with the Ministry of National Defense that the intelligence the defendants gave to China was genuine, it added.
The High Court previously had found Lee Hai-peng and his sons guilty of contravening the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), a crime to which they had admitted guilt, it said.
At the time, the court did not convict Lee Hai-peng of developing a spy network for a hostile power due to insufficient evidence, it said.
Lee Wen-sheng had received a longer sentence due to refusing to admit guilt, it said.
The Supreme Court later struck down that judgement and sent the case back for retrial, resulting in the resentencing of the defendants, it added.
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