Court Rejects Appeal Bid Over 2019 Explosives Case

The Court of Appeal has refused to hear a bid by a former member of the now-disbanded Hong Kong National Front to have his jail sentence for possessing explosives reduced.

Louis Lo was given 12 years behind bars in April last year after pleading guilty to keeping one kilogramme of the high-grade explosive triacetone triperoxide (TATP) in an industrial building in Tsuen Wan in the summer of 2019.

In seeking an appeal, he hoped to argue that his prison term was excessive and that High Court Judge Andrew Chan had erred in treating the offences of making and keeping explosives as the same; in deciding that Lo was the mastermind; and in drawing a comparison to an explosives case against notorious robber Yip Kai-foon, who was sentenced in 1997 to 18 years after being caught with two kilogrammes of TNT explosives.

But judge Maggie Poon rejected the appeal bid, saying the grounds were not reasonably arguable.

She said Lo had admitted with his guilty plea that he had intended to endanger life and damage property and by having this intent, it didn't make any difference under the law that he only possessed the explosives and didn't physically participate in making them.

Poon said the fact that Lo had rented and frequently visited the Tsuen Wan industrial unit when he knew the TATP was being stored there showed that he was indeed the mastermind.

"It is unthinkable that a mere subordinate or keeper with full knowledge of the properties of the explosives stored in the premises would place his own life in jeopardy by frequenting the premises the way the applicant did," she wrote in her judgement.

Poon also said the argument was flawed that the trial judge wrongly compared Lo's one kilogramme of TATP with Yip's two kilogrammes of TNT.

She said the judge had taken into account that raw materials that could be used to make more explosives were found in Lo's case, along with other items commonly used by rioters in 2019.

She said Lo was also in possession of material advocating subversion of the government and Hong Kong independence and it was not unrealistic of the trial judge to conclude that the public and police had been at a greater risk of harm than in the Yip case.

She added that the trial judge had been right to decide that while Yip had gone after money, Lo's targeting of the Hong Kong government had been aimed at creating fear and terror among the public.