Ousted former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol, who is in detention while on trial and facing various criminal probes, lay on the floor of his cell yesterday and refused to leave it for questioning, a spokesperson for a special prosecutor said.
Yoon was removed from office in April by the South Korean Constitutional Court over his botched attempt last year to declare martial law and is now being investigated by a special prosecution team formed under new South Korean President Lee Jae-myung.
Prosecutors investigating influence-peddling allegations connected to Yoon and his wife, Kim Keon-hee, had tried to get him to comply with an arrest warrant and attend questioning voluntarily, a spokesperson for the special prosecution said.
Photo: Reuters
“However, the suspect stubbornly refused to do so, while lying on the ground, not dressed in a prison uniform,” Oh Jung-hee, the spokesperson for the special prosecution, told a news briefing.
She said investigators would try again to bring him in, even if they had to use force.
Yoon was dressed only in his undershirt and underwear when prosecutors came to his cell, the Yonhap News Agency reported, citing the special prosecution.
Yu Jeong-hwa, one of Yoon’s lawyers, said that bringing up what he was wearing in a small space where the temperature was close to 40°C was a public insult to his dignity and showed how the state was contravening inmates’ human rights.
The former president was put back in a solitary cell at the Seoul Detention Center in last month, as prosecutors investigating his short-lived declaration of martial law in December last year sought additional charges against him.
Yoon is already on trial for insurrection, a charge which is punishable by death or life imprisonment.
He also faces a string of other investigations, including one into scandals surrounding former first lady Kim, where the couple allegedly exerted inappropriate influence over elections.
The former president has repeatedly rejected requests by prosecutors to appear for questioning, citing health issues.
His lawyers on Thursday said that he was unwell due to preexisting conditions, including a condition that meant there was a risk of him losing his eyesight.
In a reference to Yoon’s position as a former top prosecutor, Oh said the case was being closely scrutinized by the public.
“The suspect has consistently highlighted the importance of laws, principles, fairness and common sense, and through this case people are watching if the law applies equally to everyone,” Oh said.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
SECRETIVE SECT: Tetsuya Yamagami was said to have held a grudge against the Unification Church for bankrupting his family after his mother donated about ￥100m The gunman accused of killing former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe yesterday pleaded guilty, three years after the assassination in broad daylight shocked the world. The slaying forced a reckoning in a nation with little experience of gun violence, and ignited scrutiny of alleged ties between prominent conservative lawmakers and a secretive sect, the Unification Church. “Everything is true,” Tetsuya Yamagami said at a court in the western city of Nara, admitting to murdering the nation’s longest-serving leader in July 2022. The 45-year-old was led into the room by four security officials. When the judge asked him to state his name, Yamagami, who
RSS