Jimmy Lai Denied U.K. Human Rights Lawyer—Again
Hong Kong’s Court of First Instance has rejected Jimmy Lai’s appeal challenging the denial of access to U.K. counsel. In November of last year, a national security committee denied Lai, a U.K. citizen, the right to add King’s Counsel Tim Owen, a veteran U.K. lawyer specializing in the rights of political prisoners, to his defense team. On May 10, Hong Kong legislators passed a bill handing near-complete control over decisions as to who can practice law in the city to the CCP-friendly chief executive, John Lee. The bill, dubbed the Legal Practitioners Amendment, gives Chief Executive Lee the decisive role in determining whether to admit foreign legal counsel in national security trials like Lai’s.
On Friday, Chief Judge of the High Court Jeremy Poon rejected Lai’s request to overturn the committee’s decision. Poon ruled that the courts have no jurisdiction over committee decisions under the terms of the Beijing-backed National Security Law, passed in 2020.
Lai’s Hong Kong lawyers had filed an application back in April for judicial review, requesting that the original national security committee decision to bar Owen be overturned, as the committee had overstepped its powers. “There is no power or jurisdiction to determine specific questions arising from cases, let alone overturn judicial decisions,” they insisted.
Nevertheless, Poon ruled that “The courts have neither the training nor expertise to deal with them in the exercise of their judicial function.”
