Taiwan's jailed ex-president Chen Shui-bian tries to hang himself

Imprisoned former Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian tried to commit suicide by hanging himself with a towel on Sunday, but was stopped by wardens, Taiwan's justice ministry said.

Chen, 62 and serving a 20-year term for corruption, tied a bath towel to a shower pipe about 90cm from the ground in the bathroom of his cell in a prison hospital in Taichung, central Taiwan, on Sunday night, the ministry's Corrections Agency said yesterday.

Agency officials said prison guards noticed something odd on the closed-circuit monitoring system and stopped Chen from trying to hang himself.

"We immediately asked hospital personnel at Pei De Hospital to check his blood pressure, heart beat and other life signs, which later turned out to be all right," an agency spokesman said.

He said the prison authorities had arranged for psychologists and related personnel to hold consultations with Chen yesterday, and he had been offered some life education courses to help ease his frustrations.

Chen was upset after learning that he had been excluded from a newly revised law that spares those charged or jailed for illegally using special funds meant for public functions.