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Berlin, May 27 (CNA) A high court in the Czech Republic has ruled that four Taiwanese fraud suspects arrested last year be extradited to China, Taiwan's representative office in the country confirmed Monday.
The move was made despite efforts by the representative office to discuss the issue with Czech authorities and call the Czech Ministry of Justice's attention to China's poor record on human rights.
The four were among eight Taiwanese fraud suspects arrested by the Czech police last year, according to a report published Monday by Czech newspaper Deník N.
The eight Taiwanese are suspected of defrauding Chinese people of 1 million euros (US$1.12 million) through internet phones, according to the report.
The Chinese government filed a motion with the court demanding that four of the suspects be deported to China for trial, and the Prague High Court ruled in its favor, the report said.
The court said it made its decision after being convinced by guarantees from Chinese authorities that the suspects will be fairly tried and will not be subject to capital punishment, according to the report.
The other four Taiwanese who were arrested in the case must still stand trial in the Czech Republic, according to Taiwan's representative office there.
Jan Levy, a lawyer representing the Taiwanese suspects, will appeal the ruling based on the argument that it violated the country's constitution, according to the report.
Officials from Taiwan's representative office in the Czech Republic told CNA that the eight Taiwanese suspects were arrested in January 2018 after the Czech police issued an Interpol red notice, an alert circulated by Interpol to communicate information about crimes and criminals in a member state.
The representative office tried to make the case to Czech judicial authorities that Taiwanese suspects should be sent back to Taiwan for a judicial investigation in accordance with principle of nationality, but to no avail.
(By Lin Yu-li and Evelyn Kao)
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