A couple of cases are in the news lately... first, this open letter from NATPA, one of the pro-Taiwan organizations in the US and Canada...We also thank DPP legislators Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋), Mark Chen (陳唐山) and Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財) for speaking up for former Sino Swearingen Aircraft Corp (SSAC) chairman and chief executive Kuo Ching-chiang (郭清江), a member of NATPA allegedly involved in embezzlement and corruption at SSAC.In addition to the Kuo case, there is another case that is apparently similar to the sad history of the Hsichih trio. A friend who comes to Taiwan to cycle alerted me, saying:
The three legislators said that the Special Investigation Division (SID), after conducting the SSAC investigation in 2008, did not further investigate the case.
Usually investigations must be finalized within eight months, but this case has been ongoing for almost five years without finding any wrongdoing by Kuo. The SID will not close the investigation and Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫) and Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) will not deal with it. This has caused suspicion that it is being handled on a political basis.
Kuo is not a public official, but he is under investigation for malfeasance. He was also barred from leaving the country for 10 months without legal grounds.His human rights have been seriously violated.
I'm writing about a sad case brought to my attention in December and recently again. Perhaps you know it already. Chiou Ho-shun from Hsinchu has been on death row since 1989. His confession of murder was extracted under torture, documented by police records. He has since claimed his innocence.
In 1994, two public prosecutors and 10 police officers handling the case were convicted of extracting confessions through torture. After this, the defendants’ confessions were not excluded as court evidence. Instead, only those sections of the tapes with clear evidence of torture were excluded. No material evidence linking Chiou Ho-shun or his co-defendants to the crimes has ever been produced.
More information below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtSgozQ7vRk
http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/LWM-Taiwan
http://www.change.org/petitions/president-of-taiwan-stop-the-execution-of-chiou-ho-shun-confession-extracted-under-torture-2
http://www.taedp.org.tw/p/959
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1 comment:
AmCham's report was confirmed from an experience I had working with a major Taiwan law firm. Add one more detail, the child judges are appointed because remuneration for being a judge is not as well paid as being an attorney, so senior jurists are not usually interested in serving in these positions.
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