Breakthrough in body-in-cement murder case: Taiwan sends back three wanted Hongkongers
Taiwan authorities return three male suspects to city in first coordinated effort since handover after woman suspect said she feared for her life
A young woman suspected of involvement in the body-in-cement murder case who fled to Taiwan last month returned to Hong Kong on Monday night and was promptly arrested in the first coordinated law enforcement effort of its kind since 1997.
The initiative was the first time since the handover that a suspect wanted by Hong Kong authorities was sent back to the city from Taiwan, a veteran local policeman said.
Three men who had fled with the woman to Taiwan were sent back to the city early Tuesday.
The 18-year-old woman, surnamed Ho, sought protection from Taiwan police on Sunday night.
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“She told us she feared for her life if she was to stay with the three others any longer,” Huang Chia-lu, deputy commissioner of the Criminal Investigation Bureau of Taiwan’s National Police Agency, told the press on Monday.
“She said she was not very much involved in the [murder] case, and that she was willing to return to Hong Kong to explain her case to police.”
With the information she provided, Taiwan police were then able to locate the three other suspects at an apartment block in the greater Taipei area where they had been hiding for at least the past two weeks with the help of local friends.
They had earlier changed locations across Taipei “every one to two days”.
With the help of Taiwan immigration officials, the woman left Taipei on Sunday evening. She was arrested on arrival in Hong Kong on Monday night.
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At noon Monday, the three male suspects aged between 20 and 26 were taken away by plainclothes officers in unmarked police cars in Banqiao district in New Taipei City.
Taiwan’s National Immigration Agency also confirmed to the Post that the three men were to be sent back once their 30-day visas expired.
“Their visas are now being annulled on the grounds that they may pose a threat to public security here in Taiwan based on the Hong Kong-Macau Relations Act,” an official from the island’s immigration agency said.
The four arrived in Taiwan on March 11 but were given an extra day there because the final day of their visa-authorised stay fell on a public holiday on Sunday, the official said.
Cheng Hung-chih, the Taiwanese police investigator in charge of the case, said the three men were to be put on flights provided by Hong Kong-based airlines on Monday with the help of immigration officers.
Among the three, a 26-year-old suspect surnamed Tsang was identified as the main suspect. He is the tenant of the industrial unit in Tsuen Wan where the decomposed male body was found encased in a cement-filled box on March 29.
The other three were his 18-year-old live-in girlfriend and two men, aged 20 and 23.
One man was seen pushing a trolley loaded with bags of cement into the Tsuen Wan building on March 4.
The four suspects fled Hong Kong to Taiwan on March 11, and the body was found on March 29.
The dead man was identified as 28-year-old Cheung Man-li, who was reported missing by his girlfriend on March 6. Cheung was last seen entering Fui Yiu Kok Street Industrial building in Tsuen Wan on March 4.
A team of crime-squad officers from Tsuen Wan were understood to be on standby to pick up the men once they returned to the city.
A source close to the case said Taiwan authorities were to alert Hong Kong law enforcement agencies to their return.
