President Ma Ying-jeou has expressed relief over a ruling by a Scottish court that could pave the way for British fugitive Zain Dean’s extradition to Taiwan. Ma said on Thursday that this is a good example of Taiwan-U.K. judicial cooperation.
“Although the ruling can still be appealed, the decision signifies that a country that doesn’t recognize Taiwan can still work with us to catch criminals under the precondition of respecting each other’s judicial independence," said Ma. "We believe that this case has set a very important precedent for judicial cooperation.”
In a landmark decision, Sheriff Kenneth Maciver of the Edinburgh Sheriff Court ruled that the British businessman who was convicted of killing a deliveryman while driving drunk in 2010 should be extradited to Taiwan.
Zain Dean is a British national who fled Taiwan using a friend’s passport in 2012, shortly before he was due to begin serving a four-year prison term. He was convicted of killing a newspaper deliveryman while driving drunk. Following his high-profile escape, the Taiwanese authorities have been asking the U.K. to extradite Dean to Taiwan to serve his prison sentence ever since he was detained in Edinburgh in October last year.
Meanwhile, the foreign ministry said that Taiwan's representative office in the U.K. will continue to cooperate with Scottish authorities to extradite Dean to Taiwan as soon as possible.
Earlier in May, the High Court in London ruled that Zain Dean should pay NT$9 million (US$300,000) in civil damages to the family of the hit-and-run victim as ordered by a Taiwanese court.
Both of the rulings from the civil and criminal courts in the UK are significant as they are a rare instance of a sentence passed by a Taiwanese court being upheld by a court in a country that does not recognize Taiwan.