CO129-378 - Governor Sir Lugard - 1911 [6-7] — Page 96

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appears to me to be open to serious

objection.

3.

I note that the Attorney

General supports these provisions on

the ground that the principal Ordinance

is not an extradition Ordinance but

one which authorises the detention of

prisoners already in lawful custody

when in course of transmission they

are brought to the Colony.

I am,

however, advised that a custody which

has merely been authorised by the

decision of a foreign tribunal adminis-

tering the laws of a foreign state

British territory

cannot be considered in itself valid

proof of lawful custody in the Colony

and that the Colony must retain the

right to satisfy itself by an independent

Promions

laws. The close of the principal

requiring Ordinance providing that the Magistrate

shall ask the prisoner whether he has

any valid cause to show why he should

ang

not be committed to gaol therefore

an essential safeguards for securing that

the attention of the magistrate shall be

called to any plea which the prisoner Arw

can urge against his detention. The offender under detention may p fugitive/criminal may be able to show

cause against his comittal to prison

for exampla

by satisfying the magistrate that the

crime of which he is accused or has been

convicted is not an "extradition crime"

as defined by the Extradition Act 1870,

or that his extradition is being sought

to a country with which the United

Kingdom has no extradition treaty and to

which he is therefore not extraditable

My

investigation that a prisoner passing

not unlawfully

through its limits is lawfully detained

according to the provisions of its own

laws.

from Hong Kong. In other words the

investigation does not differ materially

from