Judge Kennth Maciver at the Edinburg Sheriff Court has ruled that British fugitive Zain Dean should be extradited to Taiwan. That’s the word from the Taipei Representative Office in the U.K on Wednesday.
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 askinng the U.K. to extradite Dean to Taiwan to serve his prison sentence ever since he was detained in Edinburgh in October last year.
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.