TNAG-2654-FCO40-3847-Extradition-cases-from-the-UK-and-France-to-Hong-Kong-Lorrai-1992 — Page 39

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were increasingly part of life, and accepted.

4. On the substance of the Saniman case, I said that we had been very surprised by the decision of the Ministry of Justice, given that the Versailles court had recommended in favour of extradition. M. Thebault told me on a strictly personal basis that the French had received information from a source whose name he could not give me that Saniman's security could not be guaranteed if he were returned to Hong Kong: "quite simply, he might never come out alive". I expressed amazement both at this contention and the fact that the Ministry should have built a case on so shaky a foundation. I said that I shared his regret that we had not talked this through at an earlier stage.

Comment

5. I fear we are in a classical "if only" situation. At the moment, I draw the following tentative conclusions:

a)

b)

c)

d)

We have stirred the French up by going down the path of the recours gracieux and the Conseil d'Etat. But as M. Thebault says, the weight of the current government's legal establishment will be thrown in our path;

It is clear that although the Ministry of Justice gave legal reasons for their failure to approve the recommendation for extradition of the Versailles court, the real reasons (as Counsel advised us was likely to be the case) were, loosely speaking, political/human rights related;

Although there are clearly good legal arguments in our favour, and the Ministry of Justice will not be able to raise their spurious human rights concerns in the Conseil d'Etat, given that they did not even hint at such a reason in their formal response to us, our case will be difficult to win under the present government. Therefore we have been right to play things long, and with luck may be able to extend the formalities into the period of a new rightwing government, which gives us our best chance of a reversal of the present government's decision;

The lesson for the future is that we should not rely on any political message filtering up through the Quai bureaucracy. In retrospect we were wrong to advise the then Solicitor-General not to raise the Saniman case when here last year, and generally we should be less hesitant about making a politically motivated approach to the Minister of Justice's cabinet when we have a really important case on our hands. Obviously the currency could easily become devalued. We would have to be selective.

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