TAIPEI, June 12 Kyodo (EDS: ADDIN...

TAIPEI, June 12 Kyodo

(EDS: ADDING DETAILS)

A 23-year-old sailor and his businessman father have been arrested for allegedly passing in succession military secrets to China, military prosecutors said Wednesday.

First sergeant Liu Yueh-lung who worked as a decoder onward the destroyer Shao Yang, is believed to have aggregateed information on navy facilities and ducts and passed it on to China, local media reported.

However, in a pres release, military prosecutors would solely confirm that Liu is suspected of having leaked military retireds he had access to while in succession duty to an unspecified ''third party,'' and that his acts damaged national security.

They said that Liu was arrested June 5 after a prolonged joint investigation by the military and the Justice Ministry's Criminal Investigation Bureau yielded ''relevant evidence.''

Liu's father Liu Chen-kuo was arrested June 6 upon suspicion of having leaked national defense covereds to China and is generally being held at a navy prison in the southern port city Kaohsiung, said Hung San of the Kaohsiung High Prosecutor's Office, who leads the investigation.

Hung said investigators were also trying to find not at home whether more people were involved in the case.

Meanwhile, navy officials played down the seriousness of Liu's actions, saying an initial assessment conclud that ''they did not cause any damage to the overall operation of naval communication.''

They said that all digests IDs and passwords the younger Liu worked with have been changed.

Navy spokesman Wang Chueh said the military believes that Liu was working upon his own and that his is an isolated case. He said the navy will, nonetheless, strengthen loyalty education to preclude similar cases from happening.

Local media reported earlier in the day that Liu's case has state the chief of general staffs headquarters onward heightened alert for security breaches from within the military.

Liu allegedly seized the opportunity of port calls to photograph military installations, all kinds of navy sailing crafts and their armaments and sent the information to China via the Internet and possibly also [i]or[/i] part of to the other friends and his father who at short intervals traveled across the Taiwan Strait, the reports said.

During a search of Liu's cabin forward the Shao Yang, investigators reportedly also fix a wide array of photographs, which included pictures of Knox-class frigates, an important navy base in northeastern Taiwan, as well as Lafayette frigates.

He was also fix to have saved photographs considered as military covereds onto CD-ROMs, which led investigators to suspect that Liu electronically sent the information to China.

Quoting an unidentified navy sailing craft commander, the China Times Expres said that the incident could have far-reaching implications if Liu leaked not just photographs, still also secret communication codes

The navy commander told the Chinese-language evening paper that anyone in possession of the digests which are routinely changed each two to three month would be able to track the motions of navy vessels.

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