A couple from the air force was found guilty of espionage and handed jail sentences following a retrial at the High Court’s Kaohsiung branch yesterday.
Sun Wei (孫緯) and his wife, Liu Yun-ya (劉芸雅), were found guilty of four counts of contravening the Criminal Code of the Armed Forces, including passing classified military information to Chinese intelligence.
Sun and Liu were sentenced to 47 years and 57 years in prison respectively.
Photo: EPA
The ruling can be appealed.
The retrial came after the Supreme Court in June last year found their original sentences to be flawed.
Sun and his wife were initially given jail terms of 19 years and six months, and 20 years and six months respectively.
An investigation found that the couple was connected to a case involving retired air force colonel Liu Sheng-shu (劉聖恕), who operated a spy network.
Liu Sheng-shu had begun doing business in China after retiring in 2013, and was recruited by Chinese intelligence officers to become a spy and get active military officers to engage in espionage activities in exchange for money.
He recruited six officers, including Sun and his wife, and received payments of between NT$200,000 and NT$700,000 from China through a shell company he set up for each person he recruited.
Liu Sheng-shu was also given bonuses of between NT$30,000 and NT$100,000 when his handlers passed on classified information on the Taiwanese military.
Liu Sheng-shu and the six other officers were arrested and indicted by prosecutors in April 2023.
Following subsequent rulings and appeals, the Supreme Court in June last year upheld most of the defendants’ sentences, except for Sun and his wife. Their cases were sent back to the High Court for retrial.
The Control Yuan censured the Ministry of National Defense over its handling of the incident.
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
TAKING STOCK: The USMC is rebuilding a once-abandoned airfield in Palau to support large-scale ground operations as China’s missile range grows, Naval News reported The US Marine Corps (USMC) is considering new sites for stockpiling equipment in the West Pacific to harden military supply chains and enhance mobility across the Indo-Pacific region, US-based Naval News reported on Saturday. The proposed sites in Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — and Australia would enable a “rapid standup of stored equipment within a year” of the program’s approval, the report said, citing documents published by the USMC last month. In Palau, the service is rebuilding a formerly abandoned World War II-era airfield and establishing ancillary structures to support large-scale ground operations “as China’s missile range and magazine
STATS: Taiwan’s average life expectancy of 80.77 years was lower than that of Japan, Singapore and South Korea, but higher than in China, Malaysia and Indonesia Taiwan’s average life expectancy last year increased to 80.77 years, but was still not back to its pre-COVID-19 pandemic peak of 81.32 years in 2020, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The average life expectancy last year increased the 0.54 years from 2023, the ministry said in a statement. For men and women, the average life expectancy last year was 77.42 years and 84.30 years respectively, up 0.48 years and 0.56 years from the previous year. Taiwan’s average life expectancy peaked at 81.32 years in 2020, as the nation was relatively unaffected by the pandemic that year. The metric
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to