TAIPEI, February 11 -- With a head of grey hair and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, the casually dressed Chen Fu-men looks like a grandfather next door. But in intelligence circles on the two rival sides of the Taiwan Strait, he is a well-known figure. Chen’s involvement in the killing of a Taiwanese-American author 35 years ago shocked the United States, which angrily demanded that the self-ruled island hand over Chen and two others to the American justice system. The assassination also became one of the triggers for democratisation on the self-ruled island, which had been under authoritarian rule by Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo since 1949. The author, Henry Liu, 51, a Taiwanese journalist who moved to the United States in 1967 and later became an American citizen, had published an unflattering biography of Chiang Ching-kuo and was an outspoken critic of Taiwan’s ruling party. Powerful officials in Taipei also believed that he was spying for the mainland. In 1984, vice-admiral Wang Hsi-ling, the head of the island’s Military Intelligence Bureau, ordered his deputy Hu Yi-min and his top aide Chen to kill Liu, according to Chen. Chen asked the leader of Taiwan’s notorious Bamboo Union gang, Chen Chi-li, to eliminate the journalist. In October, he and two other gangsters gunned down Liu in the garage of his northern California home. The murder rocked the US, and its relations with Taiwan dropped to their lowest point after a furious State Department accused Taipei of sending killers to assassinate an American citizen. The FBI was involved in the search for suspects, and through a tapped phone traced a conversation between Wang and Chen Chi-li. Taiwanese authorities later arrested the gang leader and his aide. Threatening to cut off arms sales to Taiwan, Washington demanded that Chiang Ching-kuo’s government extradite the suspects to face trial in the US. The Chiang government finally allowed the FBI to question the three intelligence officials in Taiwan.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Thank you for choosing to make a difference through your donation. We appreciate your support.
This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesCategories
All
Archives
April 2024
|