Rt Hon Geoffrey Rippon
QC MP
House of Commons
LONDON
Secretary of State
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11
You wrote to John Tomlinson on 17 May enclosing a letter from your constituent, Mr P Ruskin of 43 Ladywell Way, West Farm Westate, Ponteland, Northumberland, about the death sentences recently passed in Hong Kong on two British soldiers, Gunner George Puttock and Trooper Donald Bassett.
Gunner Puttock and Trooper Bassett were convicted in July last year of the murder of a Chinese civilian, Ng Fai, and sentenced to death. Their appeals against conviction weere discussed by the Hong Kong Court of Appeal in February this year, and earlier this month both men submitted petitions for clemency to the Governor. The Governor, with his Executive Council, is expected to decide before the end of June whether or not they should be reprieved. This is the constitutional procedure and I am not in a position to intervene. However, I shall write to you again as soon as we hear from Hong Kong.
I cannot usefully comment on what your constituent has said about a possible parallel between what happened in Egypt some thirty years ago with regard to the case of a taxi-driver killed in a kdrunken
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