Book’s claims not enough to charge Ko, prosecutors sayBy Chen Wei-tzu and William Hetherington / Staff reporter, with staff writerThe Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office on Friday said that it would not indict Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) over an author’s allegations of his participation in organ harvesting of Falun Gong members in China. “Ko was a potential conduit to Taiwanese patients,” Gutmann told a news conference on Oct. 2, 2018, adding that this created a “perverse incentive” to harvest the organs of Falun Gong members. Wu said that Ko in 2008 arranged for Taiwanese patients to receive transplants in China, was aware that the organs came from Falun Gong members and had bartered with Chinese doctors on their prices. Ko was also being paid to help China develop its organ transplant system based on Taiwan’s system, Wu said. Taipei City Government deputy spokeswoman Huang Ching-ying welcomed the prosecutors’ statement, saying that the case had caused “unwarranted turmoil and a waste of public resources” during the 2018 mayoral election.

Source: Taipei Times March 07, 2020 15:56 UTC