Taiwan's law enforcement agencies will make public the entire contents of the report regarding the March 19 shooting of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) when they feel the time is right, US-based forensic scientist Henry Lee (李昌鈺) said on Saturday.
Report
Lee, who was asked by the government to help examine the attempted assassination site and the two bullets found there, delivered his report on Aug. 28.
Lee said he guesses that investigators have yet to make the report public because they themselves have not obtained enough evidence.
"If the report is publicized, it may scare away suspects or lead to further destruction of evidence," Lee said.
Lee led a team to Taiwan in April to examine Chen and Lu's wounds, inspect the scene of the shooting and tour the hospital where Chen and Lu were taken for medical treatment.
Lee made the remarks after delivering a speech on his life in the US in Rosemead, a city near Los Angeles, on Saturday.
He was asked by reporters his opinion on why Taiwan has not released the full results of his report more than two months after it was presented to State Public Prosecutor-General Ru Jen-fa (盧仁發) prior to Ru's retirement in September.
Lee also said that he suggested that an independent investigation committee be established to investigate into all matters surrounding the election-eve shooting.
Independent
He added that members of the independent investigation committee should come from parties across the political spectrum and all the material in the report should be reviewed by completely neutral individuals before further investigations begin.
Lee reiterated that the way to crack the shooting case is to find the gun, believed to be a remodeled handgun, or the underground gunsmith where the weapon was made, or find the gunman who fired the two shots.
He said that he arrived at the scene in Tainan on April 9, almost 20 days after the shooting and, therefore, had great difficulty in reconstructing the scene.
As a forensic expert, Lee said his job is to reconstruct the scene and find as many clues as possible, not to crack the case.
In his report, Lee shed no new light on the case, in which little headway has been made with no major leads and no arrests after seven months.
Cause
He said in the report that the president's injury to the abdomen was caused by a bullet and that the bullets retrieved were not used in regular handguns.
The most significant finding in his draft report was the special "tool marks" on a shell casing found at the scene. Lee suggested in the report that police continue to aggressively search for and seize all illegal firearms in the country and "examine and compare all the guns."
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
RSS