Ex-Air Force lieutenant colonel receives 17 years for China espionage

Taipei, Sept. 30 (CNA) The Taiwan High Court on Monday handed down a 17-year prison sentence to a former Air Force lieutenant colonel for espionage offenses while acquitting a former deputy commander due to insufficient evidence and an "improper" interrogation.

The appellate court ruled that the former lieutenant colonel named Lou Wen-ching (樓文卿) met with Chinese officials abroad and provided them with internal Air Force documents, including classified documents, while he was working at the Air Force Academy as a lieutenant colonel in the flight training department between 2009 and 2015.

The court said that Lou confessed to his crimes during the investigation and that he also received payment for his espionage activities, though the payment was deemed to be low.

Lou was sentenced under Article 17 of the Criminal Code of the Armed Forces for "committing an act of espionage for an enemy or rendering aid to an enemy's spy" -- a crime which can result in the death penalty or life imprisonment.

However, a panel of judges at the court handed Lou a lighter sentence in accordance with Article 17 of the same law due to the relatively minor value of the documents that he handed over on three separate occasions to a Chinese spy via an intermediary, a retired Taiwanese military officer, identified by his surname Liu (劉).

Liu is currently wanted by the authorities.

In the end, Lou was sentenced to 17 years and deprived of his civil rights for 10 years. Furthermore, he was ordered to forfeit US$4,000 of seized criminal proceeds and hand over additional criminal proceeds of NT$50,000 (US$1,579). The verdict can still be appealed.

On the other hand, a former Air Force deputy commander, identified by his surname Ge (葛), was acquitted in the same case after prosecutors failed to provide sufficient evidence of wrongdoing.

Prosecutors alleged that Ge "clearly knew" he was providing military secrets to a Chinese spy based on his access to classified documents in an unspecified position at the Ministry of National Defense between 2007 and 2010, which also brought him into contact with the Legislature's Foreign and National Defense Committee.

However, the prosecution failed to prove that Ge had handed over classified materials, according to the court, despite the fact that meetings between the deputy commander and the Chinese spy were recorded.

Furthermore, the court found in an interrogation recording from 2015 that Ge had been subjected to "coercion" and "deception" by personnel from the Ministry of Justice's Investigation Bureau.

This "improper interrogation" rendered Ge's statements inadmissible, the court said.

Ge was thus acquitted of all charges by the court.

However, prosecutors may appeal the decision under certain circumstances, the court said.

The case originally emerged after it was discovered that a Chinese military officer named Zhen Xiaojiang (鎮小江) had leveraged his relationships with Liu to contact Lou and Ge.

The first trial at the High Court resulted in acquittal for both defendants.