Court Photo Woman Taken Into Custody

A High Court judge on Tuesday ordered a mainland woman to be kept in police custody overnight – the latest twist in a series of almost farcical events over the alleged taking of photographs during a hearing last week.

Tang Lin-ling was arrested outside a hotel in Admiralty in the afternoon, hours after a warrant was issued for her arrest.

She had been released on bail of H$50,000 on Friday and ordered not to leave Hong Kong. But she failed to pay the deposit, despite being given 72 hours to raise the money. Police officers sent to look for her found the address she had given the court was fake.

She appeared calm but solemn in the dock on Tuesday afternoon.

Judge Andrew Chan asked her if she had anything to say about failing to pay the bail money or about providing an address that did not exist. But keeping her head down, she merely said no.

She was to remain in police custody overnight before another court appearance on Wednesday morning.

During hearings last week over the alleged photography, the judge said that he couldn't get any sense out of Tang, who complained at one point that other people were eating and drinking in the courtroom and playing on their phones, and she too thought she should be able to do as she pleased.

She also dragged along a barrister she had simply bumped into. Kevin Egan said he wasn't actually representing Tang and was merely giving her advice. In any case, she later accused him of lacking professionalism and sent him packing.

Tang, who has tended to speak in English during the court hearings, claims to have had legal training in Australia. Despite this, she complained that court staff hadn't told her what she could or could not do inside the courtroom.

The photos were allegedly taken during a hearing relating to the bailiff-led clearance of the 2014 Occupy protest site in Mong Kok. The suspected breach came just days after photographs of the jurors in localist Edward Leung's Mong Kok riot trial were emailed to the judiciary.