Taichung County Council Speaker Yen Ching-piao's (
Late Monday night the court ruled that Yen and the council's vice speaker, Chang Ching-tang (
Yen was indicted on charges of corruption and attempted murder while Chang and Tsai were indicted for corruption.
PHOTO: YANG CHENG-CHUN, TAIPEI TIMES
Yen's family staged the sit-in in front of the district court and prosecutors' office to protest against what they called an unjust judiciary.
A crowd of supporters put up tents, held banners, tied yellow ribbons on nearby trees and proclaimed they would continue campaigning until Yen returns home.
KMT Legislator Tseng Chen-nung (
"It wouldn't have turned out to be so had he [Yen] not intended to run for County Commissioner," Tseng cried, "I told him that now it's them [the DPP] in power. We cannot afford to play the game with them."
Yen's family and Tseng went to the detention center to visit Yen, but once Tseng was in front of the center he declined to enter, saying he would become too sad if he saw Yen. He finally left in tears without visiting the detained speaker.
Yen's wife Hou Li-chuan (侯麗娟), meanwhile, said the family would appeal the ruling.
The controversy over Monday's dramatic developments continued yesterday.
The president of the Taichung District Court said the judge who ruled on Monday morning that Yen and Chang could receive bail could be disciplined if the ruling was proved to be procedurally flawed.
A senior district court judge, Lu Yen-jung (陸炎榮), ruled in favor of the petitions by Yen and Chang's family that the speaker and vice speaker be released on bail.
Yen's bail had been set at NT$2 million and his family had paid the money around 11:45am. However, prosecutors indicted Yen, Chang and Tsai and took them to court before Yen and Chang could be released on bail.
Presiding over a hearing that evening, judge Chuang Shen-yuan (
Prosecutors have claimed that Lu's ruling allowing bail was flawed because he alone reversed a ruling handed down by a three-judge panel -- a move the prosecutors claim violated the law.
But the court president said that the requirement of a panel in such a case is not mandatory, although a majority of judges in a meeting yesterday morning agreed that the bail ruling should not have been made by just one judge.
The president also said the court simultaneously notified the defense and the prosecutors by phone about the bail ruling before noon Monday.
The prosecutors, however, have claimed that they did not know about the ruling when they proceeded with the indictment, denying they had deliberately prevented Yen from being released.
Lee Ching-yi (
"I have no idea about what they said about telephone notification anyway," he said yesterday.
The corruption charges the three men face stem from allegations they used the council's "public relations budgets" to cover money they spent at hostess bars.
The attempted murder charge against Yen is linked, according to local media, to a 1996 shooting incident, when people from Yen's office fired shots at a vehicle driving around their office in Shalu township.
US President Donald Trump yesterday announced sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" on US trading partners, including a 32 percent tax on goods from Taiwan that is set to take effect on Wednesday. At a Rose Garden event, Trump declared a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from all countries, with the White House saying it would take effect on Saturday. Countries with larger trade surpluses with the US would face higher duties beginning on Wednesday, including Taiwan (32 percent), China (34 percent), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (25 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Thailand (36 percent). Canada and Mexico, the two largest US trading
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
RSS