THE Legal Aid Department has admitted serious flaws in processing 300 applications for legal assistance by victims of last year's raid on the Whitehead Vietnamese detention centre.
Most applicants and potential witnesses have been repatriated, and the department's senior policy co-ordinator acknowledged that their departure from the territory posed a problem.
Policy and Administration Co-ordinator Lolly Chiu Yuen-chu said her department had not responded to any applications over property lost in the raid or injuries suffered.
She said it had been waiting for advice from an outside counsel hired to look at the cases and that advice had not been received until April 20.
'We now have counsel's opinion . . . Based on his advice we will devise a course of action,' Ms Chiu said.
Only a few hundred of the 1,500 people who were the targets of the April 7 raid last year are left in Hong Kong. Most have been forcibly or voluntarily repatriated.
She was unable to explain why no decision had been made on the applications more than a year after the event.
