A U.S. lawyer who was convicted by a Hong Kong court after getting into a scuffle with a police officer was deported on Wednesday following his release from a Hong Kong prison.
Samuel Bickett announced in a statement on Twitter that he had been released from Stanley Prison and was on a flight to Washington, D.C., after a layover in Istanbul. He said he has been banned from Hong Kong.
Bickett in 2021 was found guilty of assaulting an off-duty police officer two years earlier. The U.S. lawyer got into a scuffle with a police officer in a subway station after he saw the authority beating a teenager with a baton. The teenager had been accused of fare-dodging.
He was sentenced to more than four months in prison.
Bickett had argued that the officer, Yu Shu-sang, did not identify himself as an officer and was using unreasonable force against the teenager. A judge dismissed Bickett’s appeal in January, according to NBC News.
The lawyer had already been in jail for a few weeks in 2021, and was sent back to complete the remaining time in his sentence.
Bickett on Wednesday said the Immigration Department rejected his request to have a few days to complete his affairs in Hong Kong and say goodbye to his partner and loved ones. Instead, he said he was “taken immediately from prison to Immigration Detention, then escorted to a plane the same day.”
After a layover in Istanbul, he was on his way back to Washington, D.C.
“Upon arrival in Istanbul, Turkish officials refused to return my passport and held me in the airport for eight hours due to, I was told, a ‘routine request’ by the Hong Kong Government. However, I have now departed Turkey and am on my way back to Washington,” Bickett wrote in a statement.
“I offer my deepest thanks to the staff of the US Consulate in Hong Kong for their tireless efforts to ensure my release and safe departure from Hong Kong, as well as to my lawyers, friends, family, and supporters in Hong Kong and abroad,” he added.
The Immigration Department in a statement said it manages all cases according to the law, and would not discuss specific cases, according to NBC News.
Bickett said that despite his experience and not being born in Hong Kong, he believes the fight for truth and justice in the city is “worthy.”
The lawyer said that after arriving in Washington he plans to “get to work exploring how I can best contribute to the fight for Hong Kong from abroad.”
“While I wasn’t born in Hong Kong, it has long been my home. Like many other Hongkongers, I have been forced to leave behind my loved ones in my city by an unelected government that, with open contempt for Hong Kong’s system of law and justice, has sought to destroy everything and everyone that makes our city exceptional,” he wrote.
“The fight for truth and justice in Hong Kong was never going to be easy, nor won quickly. But it is worthwhile. And I have faith that one day I will be able to once again walk the streets of a Hong Kong ruled by law and governed with the consent of its people,” he added.