HWB 14/17
CONFIDENTIAL
MAIN
FILC
19 March, 1968.
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As requested in your telegram No. 259, legal advisers (McPetrie and Grattan-Bellew) had a talk with Sneath about the case of Sergeant Chu Leung. Huijsman (0.D.M.) and Carter were present.
Sneath said that, although the disciplinary proceedings were defective in that the presiding officer failed to spot the serious discrepancies in the evidence of witnesses and therefore took no steps to clear them up, he felt confident that, although the presiding officer's decision could not be supported on the evidence called before him, if the proceedings had been vetted by the law officers before the Commissioner of Police took his decision (as is now the practice) and the enquiries reopened on this score, the guilt of the Sergeant would have been abundantly proved. To our objections that further enquiries might as easily have established the reverse, he countered with other considerations tending to establish guilt:-
(a) The Sergeant's silence between dismissal in 1962 and
his first representations to you in 1965.
(b) The fact that his colleagues in the force gave him no
support at all and did not petition against his dismissal.
He went on to explain your difficulties in following the course suggested in my letter of 11 December which, he said, would be regarded in Hong Kong as tantamount to an admission that the original decision of dismissal was wrong. This, he thought, would have a most unfortunate effect on the Police Force and on Special Branch in particular who were convinced of Chu's guilt. The decision to award an ex-gratia pension must become public knowledge and would inevitably be noted in China, with possible grave political embarrassment for the Hong Kong Government, especially at this time when relations with China are so fragile.
We find it very difficult to accept the line of argument reported in my second paragraph and are quite sure that we could not sustain it with Ministers here as a convincing answer to the opinion given by one of your magistrates and by Sneath himself when he was Senior Crown Counsel and by one of the Secretary of State's legal advisers to the effect that the disciplinary proceedings were so defective that the decision could not be supported by the evidence. If, however, you feel that despite the strong presumption that justice was not done you
must
SIR DAVID TRENCH, K.C.M.G., M.C.
CONFIDENTIAL
25
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