5 indicted with U.S. collaboration in firearms smuggling case

Taipei, Oct. 21 (CNA) The Taiwan Keelung District Prosecutors Office recently indicted five suspects with the help of American authorities for attempting to smuggle 16 firearms into Taiwan, the office said Monday.

In a statement, the office said the five Taiwanese nationals were indicted for violating the Firearms, Ammunition, and Knives Control Act and the Smuggling Penalty Act.

A local court also granted a motion by prosecutors to hold the men incommunicado, the statement said.

Near the end of May 2024, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection found packages at a Miami mail processing facility that contained firearms components about to be shipped to an address in Keelung, according to the statement.

They were able to seize four of the five packages, but the fifth was sent to Taiwan.

Upon being notified of the situation by U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, Taiwan's Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) reported the case to the prosecutors office, which then set up a task force to investigate the case, the office said.

At the beginning of June, the task force staked out the Keelung address to which the packages were to be sent, which turned out to be a motorbike shop, and waited for potential suspects to open the one package that was sent.

After days of monitoring the location, the task force finally saw the package being opened and arrested four suspects. Through the arrests, they were able to track down the main suspect, a 36-year-old man surnamed Hsieh (謝), the office said.

The prosecutors office subsequently found that Hsieh, who had dual citizenship in Taiwan and the U.S., legally obtained the guns in the U.S. before they were taken apart and hidden among hardware tools to smuggle into Taiwan, according to the CIB.

To make their case, prosecutors needed the firearms seized by U.S. authorities from the four confiscated packages as evidence, and, in an unprecedented move, Taiwan's Justice Ministry referred to the Agreement on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters between Taiwan and the U.S. to ask for assistance from the U.S. authorities.

Representatives of the office and the CIB then headed to the U.S. to collect the evidence, the office said, the first time that Taiwanese officials had retrieved evidence under the agreement, which was signed in 2002.