A CRUCIAL decision in Portugal this week on the fate of a Hong Kong man facing extradition to China from Macau will set an unbreakable precedent for others in his predicament, a human rights lawyer has claimed.
Yeung Yuk-yeung, 36, was arrested in Macau in December 1993 on charges of strangling a woman in a mainland hotel. Since his arrest, China has been lobbying for his extradition.
If found guilty of murder in China, Yeung would face the death penalty. But under existing legislation China has no extradition treaty with Macau.
Yeung's lawyer Pedro Redinha said the results of an appeal to the plenary sitting of the Constitutional Court of 13 judges in Lisbon would be known on Thursday morning.
The appeal was made to prevent Yeung being deported. If the decision goes against Yeung, Mr Redinha said he was prepared to take the case to the European Commission of Human Rights and had already supplied the commission with details.
'If the Constitutional Court rejects Mr Yeung's case then I will pursue this through the commission,' he said.
'To extradite my client to China where he would almost certainly be executed is a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights to which Portugal is a signatory.' Mr Redinha said a decision not to deport was crucial for the future of Macau and the system of justice which followed after the handover to China in 1999.