Power to extend detention of national security suspects should rest with judges: Lai Tung-kwok

The power of extending the 48-hour detention of suspects arrested for national security offenses should rest with judges and not government officials, said former Secretary for Security Lai Tung-kwok. 

Speaking on a radio program on Thursday, Lai – an Election Committee constituency lawmaker – said the best approach would be empowering the police to apply for extending the length of detention and letting the judiciary to decide on granting the applications or not. 

The court can hear from the lawyers representing the suspects and requests of extending detention will have to be granted by professional judges, instead of being administrative decisions, Lai also said. 

His remarks came after the government said in the Article 23 consultation document that it will consider implementing measures to ensure law enforcement agencies will have sufficient time to investigate arrestees when handling national security cases. 

The government also referred to the national security law of the UK which has a similar clause. 

Lai noted that there should be an appeal system or a mechanism to overthrow the extension decision so as to amplify justice. 

Lai continued that the wordings of the consultation document on offenses introduced to protect state secrets were very precise and the bar was set very high too. 

In the section of theft of state secrets, citizens would only break the law if they knew relevant information contained classified state secrets. They won’t breach the legislation if they don’t know at all, Lai pointed out. 

He added that generally speaking citizens won’t have access to state secrets and the new offense targets acts of illegally intercepting and disclosing state secrets without authority.