Prosecutors: Chen Wen-Chen’s Death Most Likely Tragic Accident

Prosecutors: Chen Wen-Chen’s Death Most Likely Tragic Accident

Sources: All Taipei newspapers

July 29, 2009

In March this year, the Taiwan Provincial Prosecutors Office, on President Ma Ying-jeou’s instructions, set up a task force to reopen the investigation into the suspicious death of Chen Wen-chen.

The prosecutors released a report on their investigation yesterday. The report listed the most likely cause of Chen’s death as an accidental fall from a high floor because no clear evidence had been found indicating either homicide or suicide. The Taiwan Provincial Prosecutors Office yesterday also dropped all charges against General Wang Ching-hsu, former commander of the Taiwan Garrison Command, and other suspects, for alleged involvement in Chen’s mystery-shrouded death.

Chen Wen-chen had been an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the US. He came back to Taiwan to visit his parents and family on May 10, 1981. The Taiwan Garrison Command had interrogated him on July 2 for giving financial support to the Formosa Magazine in 1979 while in the US. Chen was found dead lying on the corner of the National Taiwan University campus in the morning of the following day. The cause of his death had raised suspicions throughout society. The police and prosecution had set up task forces several times, trying to recreate the forensic scene. However, the task forces never had a breakthrough. In April this year, the Taiwan Provincial Prosecutors Office reopened the investigation into the cause of Chen Wen-chen’s death. Prosecutors re-examined the scene, compared transcripts of witnesses’ testimony, and referred to related files at the National Archives Administration as reference for the investigation, and their final report was issued yesterday.

In addition, based on the investigation report, Hsueh Wei-ping, one of the head prosecutors under the chief prosecutor of the Taipei District Prosecutors Office, dropped all charges against Wang Ching-hsu and the other four suspects, stating that Chen Wen-chen’s death had no connection to these individuals. However, Hsueh also stated that the investigators and prosecutors who had been in charge of the original investigation had not interrogated the relevant staff from the Taiwan Garrison Command but had employed interviews instead of formal transcripts of testimony based on investigation, demonstrating the enormous power that the Taiwan Garrison Command had wielded at that time.

DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsan criticized the hastily-issued investigation report. He said that President Ma had only given instructions to reopen the investigation four months ago, and the report already came out. He said that the report failed to meet the public’s expectations, adding that it had been shoddily slapped together and would not dispel the public’s suspicions.

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