More than 190 e-mailed bomb threats received since September last year were traced and identified as coming from abroad, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said on Saturday.
The bureau said all of the threats were false alarms and no bombs have been found by the police to date.
The string of bomb threats that began last year continued on Saturday. Hsinchu County’s Leofoo Village Theme Park, New Taipei City’s National Taiwan Library and Taichung’s Education Bureau all received similar threats, but police did not find any suspicious objects.
Photo courtesy of Hsinchu county police
The culprits have threatened to detonate bombs in areas such as public transport stations with the aim of causing chaos, the bureau said.
The e-mailed threats have been sent using the names of politicians, celebrities or anime characters to hamper the investigation, it said.
The culprits have endangered public safety “by putting the public in fear of injury to life, body, or property,” the bureau said, citing the Criminal Code.
If convicted, the perpetrators could be sentenced to up to two years in jail, it said.
The bureau advised people who receive such threats to remain calm and notify the police right away.
Police said the Internet protocol addresses the threats were traced to were from other countries, including the US, Japan and Indonesia, but not China.
Those responsible for the threats could have used a virtual private network (VPN), police said.
Investigators would try to identify the suspects by filtering the words they have used, police said.
Meanwhile, the bureau said it is continuing to target Chinese national Zhang Haichuan (張海川) in a separate case.
Zhang, who previously studied in Taiwan, allegedly sent 235 threatening e-mails to public transport systems in Taiwan between September 2021 and Tuesday, it said.
The Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office on June 14 last year asked Chinese law enforcement authorities to assist in solving the case.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS