Two men suspected of planting suitcase explosive devices on a high-speed rail train and near a lawmaker’s office on Friday last week were repatriated from China yesterday, investigators said.
Investigators made the announcement at a press conference presided over by National Police Agency Director-General Wang Cho-chiun (王卓鈞) yesterday afternoon.
Police said that the two men, surnamed Chu (朱) and Hu (胡), were apprehended and repatriated under the Cross-Strait Agreement on Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance, and arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at about 3:30pm under police escort.
Photo: Mandy Cheng, AFP
The pair left for Macau at about 4pm on Friday, just hours after they allegedly planted explosives on a high-speed rail train traveling from Greater Kaohsiung to Taipei, as well as outside Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Chia-chen’s (廬嘉辰) constituency office in New Taipei City (新北市), police said.
The suitcases contained gasoline, electric detonators and timers, with some holding gas cartridges, hydrochloric acid and sodium cyanide, police said.
Preliminary investigations indicated that Chu was in charge of planting the suitcases, while Hu was thought to be responsible for driving Chu to the locations and manufacturing the explosive devices, Wang said.
He said that Chu had confessed to the allegations made against him and had given a statement while being questioned by Chinese police, but Hu, a lawyer from Greater Taichung, had denied any involvement in the case.
Although police had suspected the incidents could be politically motivated because a note that included President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) name had been attached to the suitcases outside Lu’s office, no evidence has been uncovered to suggest politics were a motive, Wang said.
Investigators identified Hu as a possible suspect on Friday night after DNA traces collected from the suitcases pointed to him, only to realize that he had boarded a flight to Macau earlier that day, Wang said.
After contacting the Macau police, investigators found that Hu had gone to Zhuhai City in Guangdong Province at 7pm on Friday, Wang said.
Wang said investigators named Chu as an accomplice after fingerprints collected from a minivan that was used to transport the suitcases reportedly matched Chu’s and because he had been on the same flight to Macau as Hu.
“We then immediately activated the cross-strait crime-fighting mechanism to alert Chinese police so they could apprehend the pair,” Wang said.
The men were arrested in a hotel in Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, at about 1am on Sunday, he said.
Huang Chi-chih (黃繼智), director of the Criminal Investigation Bureau’s 5th Investigation Brigade and a specialist in bomb prevention, said the suspects could have learned to make explosives from the Internet.
“Although the explosives were crudely made, they could still have caused devastating damage had they been detonated,” Huang said.
DEATH THREAT: A MAC official said that it has urged Beijing to avoid creating barriers that would impede exchanges across the Strait, but it continues to do so People should avoid unnecessary travel to China after Beijing issued 22 guidelines allowing its courts to try in absentia and sentence to death “Taiwan independence separatists,” the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday as it raised its travel alert for China, including Hong Kong and Macau, to “orange.” The guidelines published last week “severely threaten the personal safety of Taiwanese traveling to China, Hong Kong and Macau,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) told a news conference in Taipei. “Following a comprehensive assessment, the government considers it necessary to elevate the travel alert to orange from yellow,” Liang said. Beijing has
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday said that the Chinese Communist Party was planning and implementing “major” reforms, ahead of a political conclave that is expected to put economic recovery high on the agenda. Chinese policymakers have struggled to reignite growth since late 2022, when restrictions put in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic were lifted. The world’s second-largest economy is beset by a debt crisis in the property sector, persistently low consumption and high unemployment among young people. Policymakers “are planning and implementing major measures to further deepen reform in a comprehensive manner,” Xi said in a speech at the Great Hall
CIVIL DEFENSE: More reservists in alternative service would help establish a sound civil defense system for use in wartime and during natural disasters, Kuma Academy’s CEO said While a total of 120,000 reservists are expected to be called up for alternative reserve drills this year, compared with the 6,505 drilled last year, the number has been revised to 58,000 due to a postponed training date, Deputy Minster of the Interior Ma Shih-yuan (馬士元) said. In principle, the ministry still aims to call up 120,000 reservists for alternative reserve drills next year, he said, but the actual number would not be decided later until after this year’s evaluation. The increase follows a Legislative Yuan request that the Ministry of the Interior address low recruitment rates, which it made while reviewing
SOLUTIONS NEEDED: Taiwan must attract about 400,000 to 500,000 skilled foreign workers due to population decline, the minister of economic affairs said in Washington President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration is considering a plan to import labor to deal with an impending shortage of engineers and other highly skilled workers, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said in Washington on Tuesday. Kuo was leading a delegation attending the SelectUSA Investment Summit. Taiwan must attract about 400,000 to 500,000 skilled foreign workers for high-end manufacturing jobs by 2040, he said. Ministry of Economic Affairs officials are still calculating the precise number of workers that are needed, as it works on loosening immigration restrictions and creating incentives, Kuo said. Taiwanese firms operating factories in the US and other countries would