The Legislative Yuan’s Judiciary and Organic Laws Committee is set to review a proposed amendment to tighten the requirements for a court to order a suspect detained.
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), and fellow TPP legislators Chang Chi-kai (張啓楷) and Chen Gau-tzu (陳昭姿), earlier this week proposed a change to Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法) Articles 93 and 101 that would eliminate “risk of colluding with accomplices or witnesses” as a reason to detain someone incommunicado.
Instead, detaining somebody should only be an option when there are no alternative measures and concrete facts already establish the risk of destroying evidence or fleeing, which prosecutors must provide evidence of to the court when requesting detention, the amendment bill said.
Photo: Taipei Times
On Tuesday, the legislature’s Procedure Committee listed the amendment bill on today’s agenda.
No legislators raised an objection during today’s plenary session, sending the bill to the Judiciary and Organic Laws Committee.
The TPP denied it was seeking to protect former party chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), currently in detention for almost a year in connection to a corruption investigation, but said it was to protect civil liberties and eliminate coerced confessions.
The Ministry of Justice yesterday held a news conference where it expressed its opposition to the proposal.
In the last four years, nearly 90 percent of suspects detained and held incommunicado in connection to fraud cases were detained on the basis of potential collusion or destruction of evidence, the ministry said.
If this were no longer possible, it would seriously undermine efforts to combat crime, it added.
The legal system should not be dismantled because of individual cases, it said.
This would allow suspects to coerce or bribe witnesses and accomplices, hindering efforts to fight crime, it said.
Fraud rings, organized crime, spies working on behalf of China, child abusers and other criminals would be able to collude with accomplices, harass witnesses and get away with their crimes, the DPP said.
Saber Youth (劍青檢改), a judicial independence advocacy group, yesterday said this move was a step backwards for legal transparency, encourages obstruction and shelters criminal groups.
Passing the amendment would be disastrous for Taiwan’s future, it said.
The number of fraud cases has increased by 3.37 times between 2022 and 2024, from 1,449 cases to 4,883, it said in a statement today.
The majority of those detained are not leaders, but lower-level criminal employees, it said.
Detaining these individuals helps prosecutors dismantle criminal groups, while the TPP’s proposal would allow accomplices to collude, hindering investigations, it added.
Additional reporting by Chen Cheng-yu
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