A merchant ship captain was granted bail at the Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday after returning earlier in the day from Panama, where he had been imprisoned for the last five years after being accused and convicted of murder.
Duanmu Wei-kai (端木惟鍇), who was repatriated by Panama on Wednesday, was free to return to his home in Taichung City after his family members paid NT$100,000 (US$3,289) in bail.
As he left the prosecutors office, the 72-year-old former captain declared his innocence and said he would accept the results of a court trial in Taiwan.
Duanmu, a veteran of the Republic of China navy, was the captain of the Panama-registered H.V. Well Pescadores bulk carrier, owned by Taipei-based Shih Wei Navigation Co, when it was sailing from the Dominican Republic to Houston, Texas, in March 2003.
As the ship prepared to enter Houston’s harbor, several crewmen discovered five Dominican stowaways hiding in the boat. The stowaways were sent off the ship and left to fend for themselves at sea on two flat wooden rafts.
Two of the stowaways, however, were later found drowned, while three others were arrested.
The captain, the first officer and 11 crewmen were detained by US authorities, but because the crime took place on the high seas aboard a Panamanian ship, they were extradited to Panama for trial.
Duanmu has always insisted that he was not aware of the incident until after the fact. At the trial and in communications with his family, the captain said the crewmen told him the stowaways had asked to be set free.
The stowaways testified that they were thrown off the ship.
The Panamanian court favored the stowaways testimony, convicting Duanmu of murder and sentencing him to 19-and-a-half years in prison in September 2005.
Since then, Taiwan’s foreign ministry has worked to have the elderly captain repatriated back to Taiwan for trial, a request the Panamanian government finally agreed to on Wednesday.
The Taoyuan Flight Attendants’ Union yesterday vowed to protest at the EVA Air Marathon on Sunday next week should EVA Airway Corp’s management continue to ignore the union’s petition to change rules on employees’ leave of absence system, after a flight attendant reportedly died after working on a long-haul flight while ill. The case has generated public discussion over whether taking personal or sick leave should affect a worker’s performance review. Several union members yesterday protested at the Legislative Yuan, holding white flowers and placards, while shouting: “Life is priceless; requesting leave is not a crime.” “The union is scheduled to meet with
‘UNITED FRONT’ RHETORIC: China’s TAO also plans to hold weekly, instead of biweekly, news conferences because it wants to control the cross-strait discourse, an expert said China’s plan to expand its single-entry visa-on-arrival service to Taiwanese would be of limited interest to Taiwanese and is a feeble attempt by Chinese administrators to demonstrate that they are doing something, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokesman Chen Binhua (陳斌華) said the program aims to facilitate travel to China for Taiwanese compatriots, regardless of whether they are arriving via direct flights or are entering mainland China through Hong Kong, Macau or other countries, and they would be able to apply for a single-entry visa-on-arrival at all eligible entry points in China. The policy aims
EVA Airways president Sun Chia-ming (孫嘉明) and other senior executives yesterday bowed in apology over the death of a flight attendant, saying the company has begun improving its health-reporting, review and work coordination mechanisms. “We promise to handle this matter with the utmost responsibility to ensure safer and healthier working conditions for all EVA Air employees,” Sun said. The flight attendant, a woman surnamed Sun (孫), died on Friday last week of undisclosed causes shortly after returning from a work assignment in Milan, Italy, the airline said. Chinese-language media reported that the woman fell ill working on a Taipei-to-Milan flight on Sept. 22
COUNTERMEASURE: Taiwan was to implement controls for 47 tech products bound for South Africa after the latter downgraded and renamed Taipei’s ‘de facto’ offices The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is still reviewing a new agreement proposed by the South African government last month to regulate the status of reciprocal representative offices, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. Asked about the latest developments in a year-long controversy over Taiwan’s de facto representative office in South Africa, Lin during a legislative session said that the ministry was consulting with legal experts on the proposed new agreement. While the new proposal offers Taiwan greater flexibility, the ministry does not find it acceptable, Lin said without elaborating. The ministry is still open to resuming retaliatory measures against South
RSS