Fugitives can continue to be extradited to the US despite an American judge's ruling that its agreement with the SAR is invalid, the Court of Appeal ruled yesterday.
It was for the Chief Executive, not the courts, to decide whether a treaty remained in place, the court said, in the highest-level ruling on the issue in Hong Kong.
Peter Chong Bing-keung, 56, fighting extradition to the US on charges including conspiracy to murder, argued he could not be sent back because, under US law, there was no valid treaty.
But Mr Justice Gerald Godfrey said: 'What this court has been asked to do is, in effect, to declare that the Government of the United States of America is not bound by an international treaty obligation into which it has purported to enter.
'I cannot conceive that it lies within the jurisdiction of a municipal court of the HKSAR to do this.' Even if the US Supreme Court gave such a ruling, Hong Kong judges could not intervene, he added.
'It must be for the executive arm of our Government here to consider whether such a treaty obligation does or does not subsist,' he said.
Mr Justice Robert Ribeiro said Chong's argument 'faces at least three insurmountable hurdles and cannot be sustained'.
