Jailed Taiwanese ex-leader hospitalized

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-11-17 20:23

TAIPEI -- Jailed former Taiwan leader Chen Shui-bian was resting in a hospital Monday after being admitted with an irregular heartbeat during a hunger strike protesting his arrest for alleged corruption, a doctor said.

After visiting Chen in the hospital, his lawyer said the former leader rejected new pleas by family members to end his fast, although doctors warned him of the possibility of kidney failure and other severe illness.

Chen, 57, who insists his arrest was politically motivated, was given glucose and saline injections to stabilize his condition but was still suffering from a slow metabolism, said Tsai Kuang-chao, a doctor at Far East Memorial Hospital, where Chen was first taken Sunday. He has since been moved to another hospital in suburban Taipei.

Chen started his hunger strike after judges ordered him arrested last Wednesday while prosecutors investigate graft allegations against him.

A prison doctor detected an irregular heartbeat on Sunday and recommended Chen's hospitalization, prison officials said. Chen also complained of difficulty in breathing and pain on the left side of his chest, they said.

Chen's lawyer, Cheng Wen-lung, said the former leader agreed Monday to let him appeal to the court for a revocation of the detention order.

Chen had earlier said he would not appeal his detention to highlight what he said was a politically motivated arrest, and rejected repeated pleas from prison authorities to eat.

Last Tuesday, as he was being led from more than five hours of questioning by prosecutors, Chen insisted that the government was persecuting him to placate Beijing.

"This is a political persecution," he yelled to reporters, waving his manacled hands repeatedly in the air.

But analysts say few Taiwanese have much sympathy for their former leader.

"Taiwanese people understand that this is a case about corruption," said Alexander Huang, a political science professor at Taipei's Tamkang University. "They know that issues like the mainland policy have nothing to do with it."

Chen is being investigated on suspicion of looting a special fund and taking millions of dollars in bribes in connection with a bank consolidation program.

Chen has insisted on his innocence, saying that $21 million remitted by his family to foreign bank accounts in 2007 came from unused campaign contributions stretching back more than 10 years, not from corruption.

George Tsai of Taipei's Chinese Culture University said even Chen's former Democratic Progressive Party was keeping its distance from him after he left it in disgrace when the dimensions of the investigation against him became clear.

"It's quite obvious he's done something seriously wrong," Tsai said. "Even though there has as yet been no verdict on the case, that's what people think."