High Court rejects politicians' challenge over phone access

HONG KONG - The High Court on Thursday dismissed a judicial review application filed by five local politicians seeking to prevent police from accessing their phones with court warrants.

The mobile phones of the five, including heavyweight opposition figure Martin Lee Chu-ming and Albert Ho Chun-yan, were seized for collection of evidence after they were charged with multiple offenses related to several unlawful assemblies last year.

Rejecting the challenge, the court said the search warrant does not grant police unrestricted power, as the five had argued, to search for anything of interest because the warrant itself has requirements that limit the search scope to contents only valuable to specified investigation.

"We think that the executing officers will be able to understand the object of the search and to comprehend the limits to the scope of the search which has been authorized," High Court judges Alex Lee and Russell Coleman said.

The court is also satisfied that there was no reason to assume police have handled the issue with prejudice and that they will not disclose the contents found.

The five are among 15 people facing a total of 61 charges in relation to their roles in unlawful protests last year.