Whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s lawyer accuses Hong Kong Bar Association of using ‘false complaints’ in bid to stop him from practising
- Canadian lawyer Robert Tibbo says he resigned from Hong Kong Bar Association because he believed he would never get a fair hearing
- Tibbo denies ‘helping Snowden to escape’ and ‘exploiting his clients to make money for himself’ as well as putting them in danger
A human rights lawyer has accused the Hong Kong Bar Association of trying to stop him from practising in the city by using “false complaints” for his role in representing Edward Snowden and getting refugees to shelter the whistle-blower in 2013.
Canadian Robert Tibbo said that in 2017 outgoing Bar Association chairwoman Winnie Tam Wan-chi and present Secretary for Justice Paul Lam Ting-kwok, her successor, initiated an internal disciplinary investigation against him.
Snowden, a former contract worker at the US’s National Security Agency, leaked thousands of documents that outlined the United States’ global surveillance programme to the world’s media from Hong Kong in June 2013 and was represented by Tibbo while in the city.
Tibbo told a press conference in Montreal on Monday night that he chose to speak out partly because Ajith Pushpa Kumara, the final refugee still in Hong Kong who sheltered Snowden during his time in the city, had been granted asylum seeker status in Canada and was waiting for resettlement arrangements to be made.
The lawyer, who faces a maximum penalty of disbarment for life, also said he had resigned from the Bar Association, the professional body for the city’s barristers, as he believed he would not be given a fair trial.
“The Hong Kong Bar Association used false and anonymous complaints by members of the Hong Kong Bar Council to investigate and [internally] prosecute me for almost seven years, and this prosecution is still ongoing,” Tibbo said.
