Bar Association Wrong On Judicial Oversight: SJ

Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng has rejected a claim by the Bar Association that proposed new extradition laws going through Legco will strip out the judicial oversight that prevents abuse of rendition arrangements by the authorities.

The association said in a statement on Tuesday that a clause in the new bill dispenses with the need for supporting documents for extradition requests to be authenticated by a judicial officer from the other jurisdiction involved.

The statement said that the new arrangement would allow authentication to be carried out by any means agreed under the one-off extradition deal in question.

"The government has not explained why it is now acceptable to insert this provision which allows the removal of judicial oversight and sanctions requests made by law enforcement agencies of the requesting jurisdictions," the association said.

But speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Cheng dismissed the idea that there would be a relaxation in standards.

"In the existing ordinance, the provisions say that documents from the other jurisdiction can be submitted via the courts, or the relevant government authorities in the courts," she said.

"As a matter of practice, it has happened both from court submissions, as well as governmental department submissions from foreign jurisdictions sending the documents to Hong Kong."

However, Civic Party leader and barrister Alvin Yeung said the government is indeed hoping to lower the threshold for the authentication of evidence.

He warned that people may think the SAR authorities are making this change deliberately so that Hong Kong courts will have no choice but to admit all evidence submitted to them in future extradition cases.

"The proposed amendment is basically assuming that all the evidence supplied by the application jurisdiction would be admissible in court. What is the standard? We don't know," Yeung said.

He said that before proper extradition treaties are signed, negotiations usually include deciding on which kind of officials can supply evidence for it to be acceptable.

Although the new legislation would enable the SAR to make extradition deals on a case-by-case basis with any jurisdiction in the world, critics have focused on the fact that such renditions could be made to the mainland which has a very different judicial system to Hong Kong.