(b) The daims concerning the alleged mistrial 9. Mr. Pinkney alleges that prior to his arrest in May 1976, he had spent over three months in Vancouver compiling specific information on aheged smugghng ac­ tivities of certain East Indian Asian immigrants in Canada, involving smuggling out of Africa into Europe, Canada and the United States, with the complicity of Canadian Immigration officials. He maintains that he was doing this work on behalf of the Governing Central Committee of the Black National Independence Party (BNIP) with a view to putting an end to these illegal ac­ tivities, which he contends were to the detriment of the economy of African countries. The author further in­ dicates that, during the period prior to his arrest, he had managed to establish contact with a relative of the per­ sons involved in the smuggling of diamonds and large sums of money from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire into Canada. He states that the relative revealed to him many details about these smuggling activities, that he recorded this information on tape, that he made copies of the letters showing dates and amounts of transactions, names of people involved and other details and that he placed this material in a brief-case kept in a 24-hour public locker. He asserts that in one of the let­ ters which was copied reference was made to a gift in cash to certain Canadian immigration officers for their assistance and also to the necessity to pay more money to a BOAC airline pilot for his help. The author main­ tains that he periodically informed by telephone the Central Committee of the BNIP and a security official at the Kenyan Embassy in Washington of his investiga­ tion and that he recorded these conversations and placed the tapes in the brief-case. The author maintains that after he was arrested, in May 1976, the brief-case was discovered and confiscated by the police and that the material necessary for his defence mysteriously disappeared before his trial. He alleges that these facts were ignored by the trial court, that he was accused of having used the information in his possession with a view to obtaining money from the persons allegedly responsible for the smuggling, that evidence that he had no intention of committing extortion was deliberately withheld, and that he was convicted on the basis of evidence which had been tampered with and distorted but which was nevertheless presented by the police and crown attorney. 10. From the information submitted to the Commit­ tee it appears that Mr. Pinkney was convicted by the County Court of British Columbia on a charge of extor­ tion on 9 December 1976. The sentence of five years' imprisonment was pronounced on 7 January 1977. On 8 February 1977, he sought leave to appeal against his conviction and his sentence to the British Columbia Court of Appeal. He argued that he had not been able to make full answer and defence to the charge of extor­ tion before the trial court because of alleged inability of the authorities to produce the missing brief-case. His appeal, however, was not heard until 34 months later. This delay, which the Government of British Columbia described as "unusual and unsatisfactory", was due to the fact that the trial transcripts were not produced until June 1979. Mr. Pinkney aheges that the delay in the hearing, due to the lack of the trial transcripts, was a deliberate attempt by the State party to block the exer­ cise of his right of appeal. The State party rejects this allegation and submits that, notwithstanding the efforts of officials of the Ministry of the Attorney-General of British Columbia to hasten the production of the trial transcripts, they were not completed until June 1979, "because of various administrative mishaps in the Of­ ficial Reporters' Office". On 6 December 1979, that is 34 months after leave to appeal was applied for, the British Columbia Court of Appeal heard the applica­ tion, granted leave to appeal and on the same day, after hearing Mr. Pinkney's legal counsel (i) dismissed the ap­ peal against conviction, and (ii) adjourned the appeal against sentence sine die, to be heard at a time con­ venient for Mr. Pinkney's counsel. 11. Mr. Pinkney claims violations of article 14 (1) and (3) ф) of the Covenant in that he was not given a fair hearing or adequate time and facilities for the preparation of his defence since he was denied the right to produce the documents and tapes ahegedly proving his innocence. He also claims that the long delay in hearing his appeal has resulted in violations of article 14 (3) (c) and (5). 12. As to Mr. Pinkney's claim that he was denied a fair trial because evidence was withheld which would have proven that he had no intent to commit the crime of extortion, the State party in its observations of 21 Oc­ tober 1980 under article 4 (2) of the Optional Protocol makes the following submission: Mr. Pinkney was ciiarged under section 305 of tlie Criminal Code: "305. (1) Everyone who, without reasonable justification or excuse and with intent to extort or gain anything by threats, accusa­ tions, menaces or violence induces or attempts to induce any per­ son, whether or not he is the person threatened, accused or menaced or to whom violence is shown, to do anything or cause anything to be done is guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprison­ ment for 14 years. "(2) A threat to institute civil proceedings is not a threat for the purposes of this section." In order to prove that he had committed this offence, the Crown had to prove beyond reasonable doubt: (1) That the accused used threats to induce the doing of something; (2) That he did so with intent to extort or gain something, and (3) That he did so without reasonable justification or excuse. In the present case the Crown met this burden of proof. Using tape recordings (and transcripts thereof) of two telephone conversations between Mr. Pinkney and his intended victims, it showed that he threatened to turn over the content of a stolen file containing informa­ tion on the smuggling of money from Kenya to Canada as well as an application requesting that family allowance payments be made to a person who was not entitled to receive them under Canadian law to Canadian and Kenyan authorities unless he was paid the sum of $100,000, later reduced to $50,000. His Honour Judge Mackinnon, of the County of Vancouver, who presided at Mr. Pinkney's trial, in­ dicated that, in the absence of any explanation, this evidence (which, it should be noted, Mr. Pinkney agreed with) was sufficient to support a conviction. Although Mr. Pinkney contended that when he threat­ ened his intended victims he had no intention to extort money from them, but merely wanted to substantiate the information found in the above-mentioned file in order to maintain his reputation as a reliable informer with the Kenyan Embassy in the United States, the trial judge, after a study of the evidence adduced by both the Crown and the accused, including testimony by the accused, concluded that the communicant did intend to extort money. The trial judge noted that in a written statement dated 7 May 1976 which he had made to the police 96