Thu, Feb 29, 2024 page3

• Taiwan News Quick Take

  • Staff writer, with CNA
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  CRIME

  Murder suspect questioned

  Taipei prosecutors on Tuesday said that they were questioning a man over the killing of fugitive Shih Mou-chiang (石茂強), whose body was found in Bangkok on Sunday. The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said that a man in his 20s surnamed Chou (周) was brought in for questioning after returning to Taiwan on Monday. Shih, a 44-year-old Taiwanese who had been on the run since 2022, was found with three bullet wounds to the head in an abandoned building near Suvarnabhumi Airport by a janitor. Thai police said that a pair of gloves and 500g of ketamine were found near Shih’s body. The Bangkok Post reported that three Taiwanese took a taxi to the rented residence of a woman, believed to be Shih’s girlfriend, at 3:12am on Sunday, shortly after they arrived in Thailand. Gunshots were heard and the suspects left the residence at 4:51am in a red Mazda van, the newspaper said. Citing surveillance images, Napatpong Supaporn, the head of immigration in Thailand’s Sa Kaeo Province, told the newspaper that the suspects arrived in Sa Kaeo in a red Mazda van at about 4pm on Sunday before crossing the border to Poipet in Cambodia at 6pm the same day, when there was no warrant out for their arrest. They departed for Phnom Penh at about 9pm and Thai police were waiting for Cambodian officials to check whether they had left the country, it said. The 23-year-old owner of the van, a woman named Priyanuch Thammarat, was detained in Cambodia and would be deported, Thai police said. The whereabouts of the three other suspects was unknown as of press time last night.

  CRIME

  Japan arrests ‘monk’

  A 21-year-old Taiwanese was arrested at Narita International Airport late last month for trying to smuggle drugs into Japan dressed as a monk, Japanese media reported on Tuesday and yesterday. Narita customs officials told reporters that the man, surnamed Liu (劉), was carrying 6kg of drugs after arriving from Cambodia on Jan. 25. Liu packed the drugs — reportedly a type of banned stimulant with a market value of ￥370 million (US$2.46 million) — into 40 pouches that he secured on his stomach and thighs with plastic wrap, reports said. After his arrest, the man confessed and was indicted, the reports said. Customs officials at Narita airport became suspicious because Liu had entered Japan on a separate trip just 10 days earlier, also dressed as a monk, the reports said. Liu told prosecutors that the first trip was a trial run, the reports said.

  CUSTOMS

  US pizza sauce seized

  Pizza sauce imported from the US was seized at the border after it was found to contain excessive pesticide residues, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Tuesday. The sauce, imported by Taiwan Kagome Co, was sent for testing on Jan. 29 and was found to have 1.3 parts per million (ppm) of ethylene-oxide, well above the maximum permissible limit of 0.1ppm. The 19 tonnes of sauce would be destroyed or returned to its country of origin, the FDA said. FDA Deputy Director-General Lin Chin-fu (林金富) said Taiwan Kagome has imported 11 batches of pizza sauce from the US in the past six months, and of four randomly inspected batches, two failed inspections. All pizza sauce imported by the company would be subjected to batch-by-batch inspections, Lin added. Other goods — imported by separate firms — that were seized included chili powder from China, chopsticks from Japan and green beans from Indonesia, Lin said.
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