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published by Kevin Cahill.
Osman's application is made on
the grounds that it would, having regard to all the
circumstances, be unjust if he were to be returned to Hong Kong, in particular, because the accusation against him is not made in good faith in the interests of justice. These are the same grounds put forward in Osman's fourth habeas corpus application, the alleged justification for the fresh proceedings being new documents recently disclosed in Hong Kong. The documents in question were disclosed by Bank Bumiputra and the other plaintiffs in civil proceedings
instituted in Hong Kong against Osman in 1986. A large
number of documents were disclosed in the week of 6 January
1992 and a number of these documents are relied upon by Osman to support his case. The documents relied upon are essentially a series of attendance notes of meetings and discussions between the Noordin Committee in Malaysia (which
investigated the Bank Bumiputra scandal) and various Hong Kong government officials. Osman's argument is that the decision to prosecute him in Hong Kong was a political
one and that the Hong Kong authorities had knowledge of, and were parties,to,the circumstances in which the accusations were made and that the charges against him were not made in
good faith.
4. Mr Osman goes on to argue that in the light of the
evidence available from the new documents, the Court should
re-examine his applicatoin for discovery which was made in
the fourth habeas corpus proceedings and refused on
20 June 1990. The history of those proceedings is that in
the course of the third application for habeas corpus, the
FCO disclosed a number of documents to Osman's solicitors in
response to an order for discovery. Nine of those documents (sometimes referred to as "the nine") were subsequently relied upon by Osman as supporting his argument that the accusation made against him by the Hong Kong Government was
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