SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s anti-corruption agency has requested that police take over efforts to detain impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol after its investigators failed to bring him to custody following a standoff with the presidential security service last week.
The agency and police confirmed the discussion on Monday, hours before the one-week warrant for Yoon’s detention was to expire.
The Seoul Western District Court last Tuesday issued a warrant to detain Yoon and a separate warrant to search his residence after the embattled president defied authorities by refusing to appear for questioning over his short-lived martial law decree on Dec. 3. But executing those warrants is complicated as long as Yoon remains in his official residence.
Yoon has described his power grab as a necessary act of governance against a liberal opposition bogging down his agenda with its legislative majority and has vowed to “fight to the end” against efforts to oust him. While martial law lasted only several hours, it set off turmoil that has shaken the country’s politics, diplomacy and financial markets for weeks and exposed the fragility of South Korea’s democracy while society is deeply polarized.
The Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials will likely seek a new court warrant to extend the window for Yoon’s detention, according to police, which said it was internally reviewing the agency’s request. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the anti-corruption agency will make another attempt to detain Yoon on Monday before the deadline expires at midnight.
The anti-corruption agency has faced questions about its competence after failing to detain Yoon on Friday, and police have the resources to possibly make a more forceful attempt to detain him.
Yoon’s legal team claimed in a statement that the agency’s move to delegate execution of the detainment warrant to police is illegal, saying there’s no legal grounds for it to delegate certain parts of an investigation process to another agency. Yoon’s lawyers had submitted an objection to the warrants against the president on Thursday, but the Seoul Western District Court dismissed the challenge on Sunday.
Yoon’s lawyers also on Monday filed complaints with public prosecutors against the anti-corruption agency’s chief prosecutor, Oh Dong-woon, and six other anti-corruption and police officers for orchestrating Friday’s detainment attempt, which they claim was illegal.
The…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at World News…