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One of Saniman's arguments against extradition to Hong Kong has been his personal safety, citing the deaths of two people involved in linked cases. Grossman said that Saniman and Osman were probably responsible for one, and the other was a suicide.
4. Our lawyers and I welcomed all this information, and set out for Grossman next steps in the Conseil d'Etat. On the offer of a deal, I said that we should assume that anything we told Saniman's lawyers would get back to the French Ministry of Justice. We should be careful, since we had based all our political/diplomatic approaches to them on the sensitivity and importance of the case itself, not its links with Tan. Grossman took this point, and agreed not to mention specific lengths of sentence to Saniman's lawyers. We thought that we should inform the Justice Ministry of the links with Tan and the possible deal. We shall decide how much to tell them when we have reactions from Saniman's lawyers, ie tomorrow morning.
5. I suggested that John Wood (DPP Hong Kong) should inform the Solicitor General of the possible deal, since the latter might not have come to Paris specifically on Saniman business had he known that Saniman's eventual sentence would only be two years.
He needed to know about the links with Tan. Grossman will recommend a megage.
6.
Further interesting points from our discussion:
Grossman said that he was relaxed about the possibility of a debate on post-1997 Hong Kong in the Conseil d'Etat. (Comment: Helpful, since Bertolas' concern about this tends to drive his thinking).
In answer to Grossman's question, Mme. Masse said that it was "impossible" that there had been Justice Ministry corruption in this case. (Comment: Again helpful, since Bertolas takes the opposite view, which occasionally clouds his judgement).
Grossman agreed to send to our lawyers detailed material on post-1997 Hong Kong for their use in the Conseil d'Etat if necessary.
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Matthew Rycroft
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