TNAG-0813-FCO40-1018-Allegations-of-bribery-and-corruption-in-Hong-Kong-1978 — Page 6

葉

錫

恩

(MRS.) E. ELLIOTT.

TEL. 8-422414

OUR

REF:

YOUR

REF:

1

55. Kung Lok Road,

Kwun Tong,

KOWLOON.

II.

The Legal System and its part in dealing with persons brought

before the courts, which naturally involves (a) the Judiciary; (b)

Legal Department and (6) the Legal Profession (to include barristers/ solicitors) and;

III. An assessment of matters relating to local penal institutions.

5.

6.

7.

8.

I. Police Procedure etc. etc.

This causes great concern to Mr. Sanguinette and myself and am sure to every right thinking person in the community. It appears that in the vast majority of cases the Rule of Law is ignored and relegated to the Statute Book, inasmuch as in every instance that an interview took place, the accused informed us that he had not been delivered into the custody of the Duty Officer at the Station concerned, but kept into the C.I.D. section, at times for hours on end before a purported compliance with the provisions of Section 51 of Police Force Ordinance (Cap. 232), took place.

The relevant section reads "Every person taken into custody by a police officer with or without a warrant, except a person detained for the mere purpose of taking his name and residence, shall be forthwith delivered into the custody of the officer in charge of a police station or a police officer authorised in that behalf by the Commissioner."

The complaints appear to be mainly directed, not against the uniformed branch of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, but against its C.I.D. section, who, in a good number of cases, assault the detainees during the period that they remain in their custody in order mainly to expedite matters and/or to obtain so called "Voluntary Confessions".

The importance of this provision in the Law can, I think, be best illustrated by a quotation from the leading living authority on the English criminal Law and Procedure, (Lord Devlin) who in his book "The Criminal Prosecution in England" at p. 81 thereof states:- "When a person is taken into custody, it is not that of the Criminal Investigation Department. The C.I.D. have no places of their own where they can keep their quarry under their own control. The detective officer who makes an arrest must take the accused to a police station, and there he is formally charged by the station inspector or the station sergeant, and it is in a cell there that he is confined.

So he passes

at once into the charge of what is sometimes called the uniformed branch of the service as distinct from the plain clothes or detective branch.

Cont./ You