Taiwan man arrested for threatening president's daughters

Mar 19, 2010, 9:40 GMT

Taipei - Taiwan's police Friday arrested a man suspected of issuing a death threat against President Ma Ying-jeou's two daughters, who live in the United States.

Computer engineer Chen Cheng-hsun, 49, allegedly posted a message on a website run by Yahoo Inc on Wednesday, asking US-based Taiwan citizens to kill Ma's daughters, police said.

'According to our initial finding, the suspect did that because he was dissatisfied with the current situation in Taiwan,' said Liu Po-liang, deputy director of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

The message warned that Ma's daughters should not think they are safe because they live in the US. Yahoo deleted the messages several hours later.

The bureau traced the origin of the message to the US, and finally located the man in Taiwan, Liu said. 'He used his US-registered Yahoo account to post the message in an attempt to hide his whereabouts.'

After questioning, prosecutors released the man on a 50,000- Taiwan-dollar (1,567 US dollars) bail, and without charging him.

The death threat was once treated as an act of terrorism by the bureau, which sought help from the US.

As this is no longer the case, it is not thought that charges of terrorism will be brought against the man, who could face other threat-related charges.

Ma's daughters - Leslie Ma, 30, and Kelly Ma, 24 - have been living in the US for several years.

President Ma, who has improved relations with China since taking office in May 2008, has been accused by the pro-independence, opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of supporting Taiwan-China unification, which Ma has denied.

The DPP condemned the threat against Ma's daughters. Chai Trong-rong, a DPP lawmaker, said if some Taiwanese oppose Ma, they should direct it at Ma, not his daughters.