New Hong Kong law allows national security procedures to extend to older cases

Hong Kong’s new legislation enables certain criminal cases to be retroactively brought under national security procedures even if the alleged offences occurred before the 2020 national security law was enacted.The subsidiary legislation, which introduces a classification mechanism for “other offences endangering national security” under the city’s domestic national security law, was gazetted and came into effect on Tuesday.Under the new law, any case certified by the chief executive will be classified as a national security offence, even if the act or the prosecution occurred before the national security law came into force in 2020.This classification also extends to alternative charges faced by defendants.These cases will be subject to all procedures applicable to national security offences, including longer detention periods, stricter bail conditions, trials by designated judges, and the denial of the standard one-third sentence remission for good conduct.The subsidiary legislation aims to clearly define the category of “other offences endangering national security” under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, which was previously unclear.