Chinese man gets stiffer sentence in 4th appeal of high seas murder case

Kaohsiung, Nov. 7 (CNA) A court in Kaohsiung on Thursday upheld the conviction of a Chinese man and increased his prison sentence, on charges of killing four people at sea in 2012 when he was captain of a Taiwanese fishing boat.

In the fourth appeal of the case, Wang Fengyu (汪峰裕) was sentenced to 26 years in prison on four counts of murder and was fined NT$100,000 (US$31,000.08) for illegal possession of a weapon, according to a statement released Thursday by the Kaohsiung branch of the Taiwan High Court.

The case dates back to 2012, when Wang was captain of the Kaohsiung-registered longliner the Ping Shin No. 101 (屏新101號) that encountered suspected pirates off Somalia on Sept. 29 that year.

According to the court statement, Wang gave an order to two Pakistani security guards on the fishing boat to kill the four men who had approached on a smaller vessel.

The boats were in the Indian Ocean, about 595 kilometers southeast of the Somali capital of Mogadishu, the court said.

In a YouTube video that purportedly recorded the killings at sea, a cluster of four boats were seen in the area. On the large fishing boat, two men were seen firing rifle shots at people in the water.

Then the person at the helm of the fishing boat took one of the rifles and began shooting at the people in the water, who apparently had fallen overboard when their boat was rammed.

Wang was arrested in Taiwan in August 2020 after he arrived in Kaohsiung on another vessel. He was found guilty of the four murders when the case was tried in the Kaohsiung District Court the following year.

He was sentenced to 26 years in prison, but he appealed the ruling, which was subsequently upheld by the Taiwan High Court.

The case was then taken to the Supreme Court, which ordered a retrial in 2022, citing discrepancies in the evidence. Since then, there have been multiple appeals and retrials, with the convictions swinging between one and four counts of murder in Taiwan's courts.

Thursday's ruling by the Kaohsiung branch of the Taiwan High Court extended the 13-year prison sentence imposed on Wang twice by the same high court in the first two retrials, when he was found guilty on only one count of murder.

The latest ruling can still be appealed.

No credible information ever surfaced about the identity or whereabouts of the two Pakistanis who were working on the Ping Shin No. 101 at the time of the murders.

Reports about the victims have also been sketchy, as no bodies were ever recovered.