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IN CONFIDENCE
A C Stuart Esq
RECOVED IN RAGİSTRY No.31
8 OCT 1973
NRK-14/17
Hong Kong and Indian Ocean Department Foreign & Commonwealth Office
LONDON
SWI
LAST
182
REF
10
Copy Sent & & Taylor.
HOME OFFICE
WHITEHALL
S. W. I
copy M, Rushford
Ρω
to me
Des
4 October 1973
8/10
HEX
REF
FUGITIVE OFFENDERS ACT 1967: HONG KONG
182) You wrote to Prior on 13 September suggesting that the double-criminality
rule should be abolished, so far as concerns the return of fugitive offenders to Hong Kong, so as to enable Mr Godber to be returned to face a charge of "possession of unexplained property". I have since seen the reference to the case in your Secretary of State's minute of 20 September to the Frime Minister.
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We can understand and, indeed, have much symapthy with the feeling in Hong Kong about Mr Godber's evasion of proseation. The facts remain that this is because the Hong Kong authorities were not able to prevent his leaving the Colony and have not been able, since he left, to produce a prima facie case against him of an extraditable offence under existing law. No doubt there are good reasons for both failures: but the resulting situation can hardly be laid at the door of the U.K. With respect to your Secretary of State's minute to the Prime Minister, it is because Mr Godber is not "accused of large scale corruption" that the difficulty has arisen.
To remedy it, we are being asked to revoke, in relation to Hong Kong, a rule which is now universal in extradition arrangements between the U.K. and other countries. We see a number of reasons why this would be ill-advised:-
(i) It is right in principle that an individual should not be
extraditable for an offence which has no counterpart in the country to which the request for extradition is made, and which may be unacceptable to opinion in that country. The rule is not only a safeguard to the individual: it protects the final authority in the requested country (in the U.K. my Secretary of State) from the domestic and international embarrassment which might arise if there was an issue about the fairness of a law in the requesting country. (In the present case, I suspect that there would be many in this country who would be quick to point to the reversal of the usual burden of proof and the substantial interference with individual privacy implied by section 10 of the Prevention of Bribery Ordinance). In addition, the rule reflects the role of extradition as a form of mutual assistance based on reciprocity.
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