《TAIPEI TIMES 焦點》 Court rejects forbidding Ma from overseas travel

UNSUBSTANTIATED: The court said that there was no concrete evidence showing former president Ma’s complicity in the criminal act alleged in the appeal

By Chang Wen-chuan, Tseng Wei-chen and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporters, with staff writer

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The Taipei District Court yesterday refused to issue an order forbidding former president Ma Ying-jeou （馬英九） from leaving the nation, denying the second request filed on appeal by Democratic Progressive Party （DPP） caucus whip Ker Chien-ming （柯建銘）.

The Taipei District Court said that Ker may file additional appeals.

Although the High Court allowed Ker to reopen the proceedings following the Taipei District Court’s previous ruling against him on April 29, the district court’s ruling yesterday upheld its original decision not to grant his request.

Ker had requested that the district court ban Ma from leaving the nation, known as placing a restriction of exit order, as part of ongoing litigation against Ma, whom Ker alleged had instructed former prosecutor-general Huang Shih-ming （黃世銘） to leak wiretaps of Ker’s communications from a then-ongoing legal case to the media.

Huang was convicted in February last year of disclosing secret information based on the investigation, conducted in 2013 on Ker and former legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng （王金平） for alleged influence-peddling, an incident sometimes referred to by the media as the “September Political Struggle,” due to Ma’s purported role in directing the probe against his rivals.

The district court said in its ruling that there is no concrete evidence showing Ma’s complicity in Huang’s criminal acts or that he had engaged in the solicitation of the crimes, adding that discrepancies between Ma’s testimony and that of other witnesses could be due to vague memory, instead of tampering with evidence.

The district court rejected the mostion to restrict Ma’s movement, saying his alleged crimes of solicitation to disclose secrets and breaches of the Communication Security and Surveillance Act （通訊監察保護法） and the Personal Information Protection Act （個人資料保護法） are not felonies.

The punishment that Huang received, a 15-month sentence commutable to a NT$450,000 fine, shows that the consequences of the crimes are not of a nature that warrants a restriction of exit order, the district court said.

Since Ma had not been summoned by the court, he could not be said to have attempted flight or be considered a flight risk, the district court said, dismissing Ker’s allegation that Ma’s recent application to travel to Hong Kong is a potential ploy to abscond to the US as “unsupported speculation.”

Ker vowed to “exhaust every appeal” and said that the ruling had “contradicted the logic of the Criminal Code and the expectations of the public,” adding that he would demand Judge Chiu Chun-yin （邱瓊瑩）, who presided over both rulings in the district court, to recuse herself from the case.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES