Arrest warrants were rejected for two men in their 20s accused of assaulting a police officer at a protest to block a ballot-counting site in Jamsil, Seoul.
On the afternoon of the 2nd, Yang Hwan-seung, the warrant-judge at the Seoul Eastern District Court, conducted a pretrial detention hearing for two suspects accused of obstructing special official duties causing injury and rejected the arrest warrants.
The court said the reason for rejecting the warrants was that there was no concern about destroying evidence or fleeing.
The two suspects who underwent the warrant review that day are accused of assaulting a Songpa Police Station officer on the 5th of last month. They allegedly blocked the officer after the transfer of ballot boxes from Jamsil 7-dong No. 2 polling station in Songpa-gu to the Olympic Park Handball Arena counting center following the June 3 local elections, and continued the assault while claiming that an "election commission employee disguised as a police officer" was involved, it was found.
Police initially identified a total of three suspects. However, on June 29 they applied for arrest warrants only for the two whose level of involvement was deemed significant.
Meeting with reporters that day, a defense attorney for the suspects said, "They acknowledge the act of using physical force against the police officer itself," but added, "We cannot acknowledge the injury component of the charge of obstructing special official duties causing injury." The argument is that the two-week treatment period on the medical report submitted by the injured officer cannot be recognized as an injury.