already disclosed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to be struck out on the same grounds.
In the fifth application, the Court rejected Mr Osman's arguments
that:
(i) if he was returned to Hong Kong and convicted, he would not be protected from further punishment or prosecution after the colony was transferred to the People's Republic of China in 1997; and (ii) he would be prejudiced at his trial because of missing
documents.
Mr Osman's sixth habeas corpus application was rejected by the Divisional Court in November 1991. He had argued that under the recently enacted Hong Kong Bill of Rights, he could be expected to be discharged on the grounds of delay. In his judgment, Lord
Justice Woolf said:
There is no doubt it is deeply disturbing that after this period of time, after Mr Osman has been in custody in prison in this country for far too long, it should still be uncertain
whether he is to be returned to Hong Kong. However, when you look at the history (....) it appears to me that this is a situation that Mr Osman has brought upon himself by his own actions, as the result of a deliberate course of conduct upon which he has embarked, designed to use the machinery of this Court and other courts as a way of preventing his return to
Hong Kong.
It appears to me that this is a situation where he has embarked upon a war of attrition designed to wear down the Hong Kong Government, so as to prevent his return. I have no doubt whatsoever that when the present application is considered in the context of the previous applications, it is indeed an abuse of process of the Court. It is using the machinery of the
Court for purposes for which it should not be used.
In making his seventh habeas corpus application on 27 January, Mr Osman again argued that the accusations against him were not made in good faith in the interests of justice. He claimed that
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