* ALILLEIDA
VOL. 5, NO. 2
EDITORIAL
131
Mr Anthony Scrivener, who had been in Hong Kong for only a few weeks!
It is more difficult to pinpoint the responsibility of Mr Prendergast. Apart from his "highly improper" inducement to
when a party of I.C.A.C. officers visited 's flat at 7.00 a.m. on April 30, 1974, it would appear that he did not play an active part in the subsequent negotiations whereby was persuaded to retract his sworn and unsworn denials of being involved in any corruption. But he was clearly very much involved in the "deal" with ; did he, at the time, have evidence of
other misdeeds? Apart from his own tape-recorded conversation with
which contained "disclosures which were self-incriminating," he apparently had in his possession some tapes and 24 pages of the transcript of what
had said to Mr Norman Barrymaine, a local journalist. Are we to believe that the transcript contained no more than the innocent reminiscences of a former police officer who was spending the last few months of his long residence in Hong Kong as a "guest" of the Prisons Department? We do not suggest that Special Branch techniques have no place in the war against corruption or any other socially-dangerous activity, but we do assert that they should not be regarded as an acceptable substitute for the kind of evidence which is normally placed before an ordinary court of law, especially when the relevant law confers wide and extra-ordinary powers of investigation," or as a reason for withholding facts which may be material to the credibility of witnesses who are induced to give evidence as a result of such techniques.
But the biggest question mark hangs over the "amuesties" granted t
and
The learned trial judge wondered whether they were really justified and referred to them as “the most worrying, and in some ways, frightening, aspect of the case." He was unable to find any legal or constitutional authority which might sustain them. Although the Attorney General clearly has a discretion not to take proceedings in respect of any crime," this can surely only be properly exercised when he is in possession of full knowledge of such crimes and their
*See Prevention of Bribery Ordinance (Cap. 201, L.II.K. 1970 ed. as amended
by Ordinance No. 9 of 1974), Part III. "When dismissing Godber's appeal the Full Court said that the Attorney General's power to decide not to prosecute will normally be exercised in the came way as in the UK.: see (1975) Crim. App. No. 131 of 1975. For the modern position there sec Fdwards, The Law Officers of the Crown (1954), pp. 223-4 and passim.