The office of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday rebutted an op-ed article that said Chen was beaten and discriminated against in prison. “It was a completely groundless rumor,” Chiang Chih-ming (江志銘), secretary of Chen’s office and a Taipei City councilor, said in response to an op-ed piece published by the Chinese-language Taiwan Times yesterday. Tsai Tien-li (蔡天禮), a self-proclaimed researcher at an unidentified university, wrote in an opinion piece that Chen, who is serving a 17-and-a-half-year sentence at Taipei Prison for corruption, was beaten in prison and that inmates spit and urinated on his food. According to Chiang, Taiwan North Society chairman Chou Fu-nan (周福南) visited Chen yesterday afternoon and asked Chen about what was described in Tsai’s article. Chen denied it, saying he was neither beaten nor mistreated by other inmates, but added it was true that the roof of his room was leaking, Chiang said.