WITCH-HUNT?While the DPP claimed that the subpoena violated the Code of Criminal Procedure, the SID denied its investigation had any pre-election political considerations
By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
The Special Investigation Division (SID) of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office’s subpoena of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) could be illegal and politically motivated, the DPP said yesterday.
“Wu was listed as an ‘interested party’ in a recent subpoena from the SID... on which no details of the case were listed. The division appears to have violated the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法),” DPP spokesperson Huang Di-ying (黃帝穎) told a press conference.
According to the code, the SID should have listed the origin of the case and the identity of the subpoenaed — be it a witness or a defendant, Huang said, adding that “interested party” was not an identity as regulated by the code, which means that the subpoena could be illegal.
The DPP also suspected that there is a hidden agenda behind the investigation and the subpoena because the SID “is notorious for its interference in several high-profile political cases in recent years,” the spokesperson said.
That is why the division has earned the nickname “the investigation division with special motives,” he added.
“That is also why we cannot help but wonder whether there is any political agenda behind Wu’s subpoena, as the division chose to launch an investigation into a high-ranking official of the opposition party in the run-up to the seven-in-one elections in November,” Huang said.
DPP spokesperson Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) said Wu would discuss the matter with the party and his lawyers before deciding whether to report to the SID.
With regards to claims of a planned purge targeting high-ranking DPP officials, Hsu said the party preferred not to speculate or over-analyze the case at the moment, but the division’s past investigations against opposition politicians and the fact that the subpoena was issued on June 26, about a month after DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) assumed the part post, did not give the party any reason for optimism.
“Many DPP members have been able to survive judicial oppression, but their innocence was proven only after years of court appearances and trials. We hope nothing like this will happen before the year-end elections and the presidential election in 2016,” Hsu said.
In response, the SID denied that there were any political considerations involved in the investigation, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper), reported.
The SID said the ongoing case in which Wu is involved is related to a violation of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), but that the division could not go into details.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) spokesperson Charles Chen (陳以信) said the DPP had made allegations against the KMT and the judiciary without any solid evidence.
“The accusation itself is a cheap political maneuver orchestrated by the DPP,” Chen said.
The rumor that the KMT is trying to “annihilate” Tsai with the judicial investigation is a DPP smear campaign, which shows that the party wants to achieve its political goals even at the cost of losing public trust in the judicial system, the spokesperson said.