|
In a retrial, the Seoul Central District Court on Tuesday cleared eight defendants, including Woo Hong-seon and seven others who were executed in 1975 on trumped-up charges of seeking to reconstitute the banned People¡¯s Revolutionary Party. The court ruled that charges against them including violating the National Security and anticommunist laws and plotting sedition were spurious since accounts were obtained through water torture, electrocution and beatings. For the same reason, the court ruled that the accounts provided by the prosecution, intelligence agency and police at the time were inadmissible evidence.
In the incident, 270 people were arrested after anti-government protests flared up in universities in 1973, led by the National Democratic Young Student League. The arrests were prompted by what was then the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, accusing the defendants of inciting students to revolt. Seven defendants accused of trying to rebuild the party and a member of the NDYSL were executed only 18 hours after they were sentenced to death by the Supreme Court. The conviction has been called judicial murder. Tuesday¡¯s ruling restores the reputations of the eight executed defendants and their families after they bore the label of traitors for 30 years.
The incident was the result of legal manipulations by a powerful political elite during a troubled period. At the time, the legal establishment served as a tool of the elite rather than the final defender of human rights. Now a court of law has belatedly rectified an episode in its dark past.
But suspicions over the people who ordered the torture and beatings and incited the legal murders still remain unsolved. Not a few people who were involved in the investigations and sentencing are still alive, be they members of the presidential office, intelligence operatives, prosecutors, police or judges. These people must now come forward and shed light on the truth.
At the same time, we must guard against a barrage of requests for other retrials on the coattails of efforts to dig into Korea¡¯s recent history. It is crucial that we find the truths behind such incidents. But if retrials are abused, the stability of the legal establishment may come under another kind of threat. The decision to hold retrials requires wisdom from the courts.
|
