Sunday 15 November 2009

No blood found in Chen’s 2004 shooting

No bullet holes or blood were found on Taiwan ex-president Chen Shui-bian in a 2004 election eve shooting, raising new suspicion about the incident that preceded a razor-thin victory, investigators said on Thursday.

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Guanyu said...

No blood found in Chen’s 2004 shooting

Reuters in Taipei
12 November 2009

No bullet holes or blood were found on Taiwan ex-president Chen Shui-bian in a 2004 election eve shooting, raising new suspicion about the incident that preceded a razor-thin victory, investigators said on Thursday.

A dead man was named the only suspect in the March 19 incident, closing the shooting case in 2005, but many in Taiwan believe Chen’s campaign set it up to draw sympathy votes.

No blood or bullet penetration was found on Chen, then an incumbent, after he was thought to be shot and slightly injured during a campaign rally in south Taiwan, Taiwan’s Control Yuan said in a report. Running mate Annette Lu was also shot.

Today’s ruling nationalist party (KMT), which lost the 2004 election, asked for a new probe earlier this year.

“There were no bullet holes in the underclothes or pants that ex-president Chen Shui-bian wore at the time of the incident, nor were there any traces of blood,” the Control Yuan, a government agency charged with investigating conduct by public officials, said in the report.

“This still calls for a deeper probe,” the report said.

Chen, known for anti-China rhetoric that enraged Beijing as well as Taiwan’s staunchest ally the United States, was convicted in September in an unrelated case of graft, money laundering and other charges stemming from his term in office from 2000 to last year. He received a life prison sentence and is in jail, although he has appealed the verdict.