Video shows shooting suspect

david.zh

<FONT size=1>Friday, March 26, 2004 Posted: 2:08 AM EST (0708 GMT)</FONT>


<B style="FONT-SIZE: 14px">TAIPEI, Taiwan (Reuters) -- Taiwan police are seeking a balding man who was caught on a security camera as he ran from the scene of last week's assassination attempt against President Chen Shui-bian, officials say.</B>


The announcement was the first real lead since the shooting last Friday in the southern town of Tainan stirred a wave of sympathy for Chen, who was driving through the city on the last day of campaigning. He went on to win the presidential election the following day by just 30,000 votes.


The video footage, which is unclear, appears to show a balding man in his 40s or 50s dressed in a yellow jacket and blue trousers running down a nearby alley within minutes of the shooting, in which Chen and Vice President Annette Lu were lightly wounded, police said.


"We find the fact that he was running away from the scene of the crime suspicious," Wang Wen-chung, deputy commissioner of the Criminal Investigation Bureau told Reuters.


Wang said the footage showed the man running away from the main road where crowds had gathered to cheer the president's motorcade, just three minutes after police believe the shooting took place.


It was given to police by the neighborhood chief of that section of Tainan on Wednesday, said Wang.


"We urge this man or anyone who saw him or may know him to contact us and clear this up," said Wang.


Lien Chan, the Nationalist challenger, has rejected the poll result and demanded an independent investigation including participation of foreign experts into the shooting.


Police say Chen and Lu, riding in an open-top jeep, were each shot with one bullet believed to have been fired from the same homemade gun.


Investigators are focusing their hunt for the would-be assassin on underground factories that make homemade guns for use by the Taiwan underworld by altering the firing mechanisms of toy replicas.

<BR clear=all>