Taiwan will pay a total of NT$15 million (HK$3.88 million) compensation to three men who spent more than 11 years on death row before their acquittal in one of the island’s most controversial murder trials, a court said on Wednesday.
Su Chien-ho, Liu Bin-lang and Chuang Lin-hsun will each receive about NT$5 million for wrongful imprisonment, the High Court said.
The trio, who said they were tortured into making confessions, were first sentenced to death 21 years ago for the murder of a couple in Taipei.
Their legal plight began after a soldier who confessed in 1991 to killing the couple claimed that they were his accomplices. The soldier was executed the following year after a trial by a military tribunal.
They had since faced a series of trials and retrials that saw their death sentences being lifted and then reimposed until the High Court made a final ruling in their favour last year.
Taiwan’s human rights groups have seized on the case to call on the government to abolish capital punishment.