Taiwan jail uses doubles to protect privacy of ex-president

Dec 10, 2010, 14:12 GMT

Taipei - A Taiwan prison on Friday reportedly used seven inmates to act as doubles to try to prevent the media from filming and photographing ex-president Chen Shui-bian, who was recently jailed for corruption.

The CTI TV channel showed eight convicts, all wearing blue jail uniforms and straw hats, march through the Taipei Prison compound, escorted by two guards.

From the fuzzy TV footage, the eight men looked the same, but CTI reported it suspected the last one in the line was Chen.

Chen's daughter visited her father Friday, just over a week after he began serving his 17-and-a-half-year term.

Knowing Chen would walk across the prison compound to the reception room to meet his daughter, TV crews and news photographers gathered outside the prison hoping to catch a glimpse of him.

The prison also put up a huge piece of canvas outside the wall to try to block the view of the compound.

Chen, 60, an anti-China firebrand and advocate of Taiwan independence, was president from 2000 to 2008. He was convicted of taking bribes and money laundering.

He denied the charges, and accused President Ma Ying-jeou of the China-friendly Nationalist Party of collaborating with Beijing to persecute him.

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