The Supreme Court yesterday upheld a 20-year prison sentence imposed by a lower court on a man charged with attempted bombings of a High Speed Rail train and a lawmaker’s office more than two years ago.
Hu Tsung-hsien (胡宗賢), a lawyer, was convicted in his first retrial by the Taiwan High Court on two counts of attempted murder for making bombs and planting two on a train traveling north from Taichung and two outside Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Chia-chen’s (盧嘉辰) office in New Taipei City.
An accomplice, Chu Ya-tung (朱亞東), was also found guilty and given a prison sentence of 10 years and six months.
The Supreme Court’s decisions cannot be appealed.
The Taiwan High Court revoked an earlier ruling it made in which Hu was found guilty of additional charges of forgery and obstruction of public utilities.
That ruling came with a 22-year sentence for Hu, while Chu was given 12 years.
The Taiwan High Court ruled that Hu had Chu had planted two suitcase bombs on the train and another two outside Lu’s office on April 12, 2013, in a convoluted scheme to manipulate the stock market.
Beyond wanting to cash in on the stock market, Hu also planned the bombings in anger at being indicted in February 2013 on charges of extortion and leaking private information, the court said.
Hu and Chu, who are both in their 40s, fled to China’s Guangdong Province after planting the bombs, but were found and arrested with the help of the Chinese authorities.
The two were repatriated on April 15, 2013.
Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
A magnitude 4.3 earthquake struck eastern Taiwan's Hualien County at 8:31am today, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). The epicenter of the temblor was located in Hualien County, about 70.3 kilometers south southwest of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 23.2km, according to the administration. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County, where it measured 3 on Taiwan's 7-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 2 in Hualien and Nantou counties, the CWA said.
The Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) yesterday announced a fundraising campaign to support survivors of the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28, with two prayer events scheduled in Taipei and Taichung later this week. “While initial rescue operations have concluded [in Myanmar], many survivors are now facing increasingly difficult living conditions,” OCAC Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) told a news conference in Taipei. The fundraising campaign, which runs through May 31, is focused on supporting the reconstruction of damaged overseas compatriot schools, assisting students from Myanmar in Taiwan, and providing essential items, such as drinking water, food and medical supplies,
New Party Deputy Secretary-General You Chih-pin (游智彬) this morning went to the National Immigration Agency (NIA) to “turn himself in” after being notified that he had failed to provide proof of having renounced his Chinese household registration. He was one of more than 10,000 naturalized Taiwanese citizens from China who were informed by the NIA that their Taiwanese citizenship might be revoked if they fail to provide the proof in three months, people familiar with the matter said. You said he has proof that he had renounced his Chinese household registration and demanded the NIA provide proof that he still had Chinese
RSS