TESTIMONY given by Royal Hongkong Police officers at the trial of five men accused of kidnapping a businessmen was ''untrustworthy'' and ''speculative,'' according to defence counsel. The five are accused of kidnapping the Vancouver restaurant owner and collecting a HK$1.6 million ransom from his wealthy father at the Furama hotel in Hongkong last February. But attorney Mr Chris Johnson told the jury the evidence provided by Constable Lam Wai-keung regarding his observations in Hongkong of two of the accused - Paul Lok Po-ling and Ip Kwok-wai - was ''coloured''. He recounted the officer's testimony that Canadian investigators provided him with one telephone number belonging to the victim's father in Taiwan and another for the Vancouver home, where the kidnappers were allegedly holding victim Mr Warren Cheng. Mr Johnson said Constable Lam's statements were ''completely untrustworthy'' when he said he followed the co-accused to a telephone booth in Chater Road in Hongkong and, standing ''six to twelve inches'' away, watched them dial the Taiwan telephone number and overheard a demand for US$1 million (HK$7.73 million) in ransom. Ip's defence attorney, Mr Ian Donaldson, also questioned statements from other officers, demanding the jury reject the notion that two men would huddle in a telephone booth and make a ransom call with an undercover police officer looking over their shoulders. While he agreed that Ip was video-taped accepting a US$210,000 ransom in the lobby of the Furama hotel, he dismissed another RHKP member's identification of tiny initials marked on a pair of glasses allegedly worn by Ip that day. ''Not everything that comes from these police officers can be taken at face value,'' he said, arguing that Ip may have been ''kept dumb'' as the ''frontman'' for the real kidnappers. The two men - along with Elton Hui Kwok, Roland Tam Kwei-nin and Lai Chun-ngai - are charged with kidnapping, unlawful confinement, hostage-taking and extortion. Attorneys for the three men charged in the Vancouver side of the kidnapping argued there were inconsistencies in telephone records and ''frailties in eyewitness identification'', including failure to identify some of the co-accused in a police line-up. In his testimony, Mr Cheng said he was grabbed by masked men at gunpoint in an underground car park, and held bound and blindfolded in a basement for six days while his captors arranged for the ransom. The hearing continues.
