Defiant gangster Yip Kai-foon claims new evidence can prove his innocence and told judges yesterday he was deter mined to clear his name.
The notorious gunman, once Hong Kong's most wanted man, succeeded in having his sentence reduced by five years in the Court of Appeal.
This leaves him serving 36 years and three months for escaping from custody, kidnapping, shooting at police and possessing a potentially devastating haul of explosives.
Mr Justice Noel Power said Yip, 38, and his gang had come close to 'declaring war on society' and his crimes were of the most serious kind.
But the length of the sentence was too harsh and was therefore reduced.
Yip immediately urged the judges to reopen his appeal and to allow him to take his case to the top court to argue he was the victim of a grave injustice.
The gang boss, paralysed by gunshot wounds suffered in a shootout with police, had been portrayed by his lawyers as a pitiful shadow of the man he once was. During earlier court hearings he had appeared to be barely able to stay awake as he shivered in his wheelchair, attended to by a nurse.