The Military Police Command yesterday dismissed allegations of irregularities in its search of the home of a man said to be in possession of documents related to the White Terror era, saying the investigation was conducted in accordance with due process.
“The Taipei Military Police Station launched a probe on Feb. 19 that involved a man, surnamed Wei (魏), who was charged with possessing stolen property and interfering with personal privacy after he allegedly sold documents dated from the 1960s to 1970s on the Internet,” the command said yesterday.
The command said Wei confessed to owning and selling the documents and subsequently signed a consent-to-search form, adding that all the evidence was voluntarily collected by Wei at his residence.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
Staff from the military police station did not conduct a search themselves, the command said, dismissing allegations of an illegal search as unsubstantiated.
“Following the collection of evidence, Wei was brought in to the station for questioning at 9:14pm on the same day. He was sent home at 9:34pm after the station issued a receipt for the seized items,” the command said.
The command made the remarks amid growing attention to the case implicating Wei, whose daughter is believed to be the author of an article detailing Wei’s situation that was posted on Saturday on the Professional Technology Temple (PTT), the nation’s largest academic online bulletin board.
Wei’s daughter, who goes by the pseudonym “k9t8u5,” said in the article, titled “Military police illegally searched my house and seized items,” that her father owned a collection of White Terror era documents.
“Just a few days before the 69th anniversary of the 228 Incident, several military police came and raided my house, confiscated the documents and used a minivan to drive my father to their interrogation room for questioning,” she said.
She said her father also sold pu-erh tea leaves online and military police posed as potential buyers of tea and asked her father to meet them at an MRT station.
She said her father told her that when he met the military police, they demanded to search his house.
“My dad asked to see a warrant, but they told him it was an easy task to get a warrant and that his refusal to cooperate would end badly for him. That was why my father got in their car and allowed them to search our house without a warrant,” she wrote.
She said her father was then taken away for questioning and did not return home until midnight, adding: “My dad later told me that he thought he was never going to be allowed to go home.”
A few days later, the Ministry of National Defense visited Wei at his house and offered him a cash reward of NT$15,000 for his “dedication to the nation,” provided that he signed an affidavit pledging not to reveal the “illegal search of his house, the illegal confiscation of the documents and his illegal detention,” his daughter wrote.
“My father turned down the offer... I am worried because he has not been able to sleep since the incident. The military police know where we live and I am afraid my parents might one day die in a forced suicide,” she said.
Military Police Command director Hsieh Ming-te (謝明德) yesterday faced the media, saying that the seized documents did not pertain to the 228 Incident or the White Terror era, but were classified government documents from the 1960s and the 1970s.
Hsieh said the command has the same mandate as law enforcement officials and that military police only went to Wei’s house after he consented to the search, adding that there was absolutely no offer of any hush money.
The 228 Incident refers to an anti-government uprising that began on Feb. 27, 1947, and a series of bloody purges against civilians in subsequent months by the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime.
The event marked the beginning of the White Terror era.
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