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: (i) that 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) that 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 judgement, 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 whatsover 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 documents which had recently come to light in Hong Kong supported
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