A Taiwanese traveler who was detained by police on Sunday when transiting through Abu Dhabi International Airport has been released from custody, but is still not allowed to leave the country, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
The ministry in a statement said its office in Dubai received a call from the man’s family yesterday at 1:30am, informing the office that he had been released from detention.
Despite the release, the Yunlin County man surnamed Chen (陳), still has to report to police to have his travel restrictions lifted, and that cannot happen until Wednesday because of a national holiday in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from today to Tuesday, the ministry said.
Photo courtesy of Chen’s wife
The ministry did not elaborate on why the man was still not allowed to leave the country.
In the meantime, the office in Dubai — in charge of all UAE affairs — has established contact with the man after his release and is putting him up in the office’s dormitory, office director Eric Chen (陳俊吉) said.
Before the release, the Dubai office had remained in contact with Abu Dhabi police and the man’s family, but it had yet to receive any clarification on why the man was taken away by police, the ministry said.
The ministry said it first received a call for help on Monday from the man’s wife, surnamed Yang (楊), who was traveling with her husband, and was told that Chen had been taken away by five armed police officers as they were about to board a connecting flight to go on a 16-day tour of Turkey.
Yang said she was not able to ask why her husband was being detained and, having cleared immigration, had to board the flight to Istanbul with other members of the tour group they were part of, the ministry said.
Soon after receiving the phone call, the Dubai office contacted Abu Dhabi police to get information about the case.
Abu Dhabi police briefed the office on the incident early on Wednesday, but didn’t provide details on why Chen was detained, the ministry said.
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS