A prisoner who says he was beaten in jail by fellow inmates because he had agreed to give evidence in the Top One Karaoke Box arson and murder case, against the wishes of a notorious robber, has denied that he was instead attacked for running an illegal bookmaking operation.
Lau Ying-tat, 42, says he was assaulted because he ignored warnings by Kwai Ping-hung, once Hong Kong's most wanted gangster, and testified against Choi Kam-fai, the mastermind of the Top One Karaoke Box arson attack in 1997 that claimed 17 lives.
Lau, who took part in the firebomb attack, is serving a life term for murder. He was attacked at Stanley Prison in March last year, days after he offered to testify against Choi, who in April this year was also sentenced to life in prison.
Giving evidence in the District Court against Kwai and two others who have denied conspiring to pervert the course of justice, Lau rejected defence lawyers' accusations that he fabricated his reason for the brawl to cover up his role of collecting bets in the maximum-security prison.
The lawyers put it to Lau that he was targeted because he had failed to pay winnings to one of the alleged attackers, Lam Kam-kong. Lau denied this. Lau said the attack took place on March 28 last year, two days after he met officers from the Organised Crime and Triad Bureau.
He said he was warned by two fellow inmates who had allegedly been approached by Kwai and other prisoners, saying Kwai was unhappy about him offering to be a witness and would cause him trouble if he did not back down.
Cross-examining Lau, the lawyers suggested that he was exempted from working in the prison's garment workshop because he was in charge of bookmaking, and one of his subordinates in the operation was the workshop foreman. The lawyers said the foreman would fake the records to show that Lau had completed the tasks assigned to him.