Taipei march protests Chen's political ploy
(AP)
Updated: 2006-03-12 15:09

Wife of shooting suspect forced to make statement

The wife of a jobless man identified by police as the most likely suspect in the mysterious election-eve shooting of Taiwanese "president" Chen Shui-bian said Sunday she was coerced into making statements implicating her husband.

Last August, Taiwanese investigators ended their probe into the 2004 shooting of Chen and "vice president" Annette Lu after identifying the man as the main suspect. He apparently committed suicide shortly after the shooting.

Chen and Lu were wounded only slightly, but the incident sparked months of political turmoil as the opposition accused Chen of staging the shooting to gain sympathy votes and eventually win the presidential election by a razor-thin margin.

Lee Shu-chiang, the widow of suspect Chen Yi-hsiung, told a news conference Sunday that she made statements about her late husband's will and filmed a video apologizing to the public after being intimidated by the then-chief investigator, Hou You-yi.

In the will, the suspect allegedly said he was disappointed with his economic situation and with Taiwanese politics.

Hou, now head of the "National Police Administration", denied the accusation, saying Chen's widow confessed of her own free will.

Lee appeared at the news conference with her three children, and was accompanied by her attorneys and opposition politicians. She claimed police had misidentified a slightly balding man wearing a yellow jacket in a crime scene photograph as her late husband.

But Hou said more than 10 other witnesses had identified Chen as the man in the photograph.

The suspect was found drowned in a river shortly after the March 19 shooting.

Chen and Lu were shot while riding in an open vehicle during campaigning in the southern city of Tainan. A bullet grazed Chen's stomach, and Lu was hit in the knee.
The next day, Chen defeated his presidential opponent, Nationalist Party Chairman Lien Chan, by a razor-thin margin.

A re-count of the ballots confirmed Chen's narrow victory, and the courts ruled the election was valid.

"The case was weird, with the suspect having committed suicide, the gun he allegedly used (to kill the president) being lost, and his will burned by accident," said Nationalist Party Chairman Ma Ying-jeou.

"Now the evidence is even thinner than we had believed," he said.