Dean Wins Appeal in Extradition to Taiwan Case

 Dean Wins Appeal in Extradition to Taiwan Case

 Sources: All Taipei newspapers

 September 26, 2016

The appeals court of Scotland on September 23 granted Zain Taj Dean’s appeal, turning down the request of the Republic of China (ROC) Representative Office in the UK to extradite Dean to Taiwan, citing the grounds that Taiwan’s prison conditions did not conform to the standards stipulated by the European Human Rights Convention. 

The ROC Foreign Ministry stated that the government would appeal the ruling to the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland, in the hope that Dean would be extradited to Taiwan to serve out his prison term for manslaughter. 

Zain Taj Dean, a British national who took the life of a 32-year-old newspapers deliveryman in a hit-and-run drunk driving incident in Taiwan in March 2010, was sentenced to four years in prison by the appellate court in Taiwan in July 2012. In addition, the appeals court also ruled that Dean should pay the deliveryman’s family NT$ 9.08 million (approximately US$ 302,667) in indemnity. The ruling was final. 

However, on August 14, 2012, before starting to serve his sentence, Dean used a friend’s British passport and, impersonating the passport holder, fled to the United Kingdom. 

In an attempt to extradite Dean to Taiwan, then Vice Justice Minister Wu Chen-huan (吳陳鐶) met with high-echelon officials at the British prosecutors office in September 2013, requesting their assistance in Dean’s case. On October 16, 2013, Taiwan and the UK signed a “Memorandum Regarding the Extradition of Zain Dean.” Therefore, the Scottish police subsequently arrested Dean in October the same year and have held him in custody ever since. 

On June 11, 2014, the Edinburgh District Court ruled that Zain Dean should be extradited to Taiwan to serve out his sentence. However, Dean appealed the ruling to the appeals court. 

The panel of judges accepted the grounds in Dean’s appeal. Furthermore, the judges also ruled that Dean was qualified for conditional parole because he had already served two-thirds of his prison sentence. 

However, a new request for Dean’s extradition was filed by the ROC Representative Office in the UK a second time on September 22, 2016, with the Edinburgh district court because Dean had fled from justice in Taiwan by impersonating another person and using his passport, so Dean was not immediately granted parole on September 23.

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