South Africa's Constitutional Court (ConCourt) today dismissed, for the second time in 12 months, a new appeal by the Attorney General's Office (PGR) against the extradition of former Minister Manuel Chang to the US.

According to the court order, the panel of judges of the highest court in South Africa also ordered the PGR to pay the legal costs of the request, submitted after the deadline, "due to the lack of a reasonable prospect of success", from Maputo for the extradition of the ex-governor to Mozambique in the context of Hidden Debts.

"The Constitutional Court considered the request for pardon and the request for admission to appeal and concluded that, although there is no reasonable prospect of success on the merits of the request for admission to appeal, the delay in filing the request for admission to appeal is minimal, the explanation for the delay is adequate, and there is no prejudice to the defendant," he stressed.

"Consequently, the pardon is granted, but the appeal must be dismissed with costs for lack of a reasonable prospect of success," said the panel of 10 South African judges.

On June 7 last year, South Africa's Constitutional Court rejected a request by Maputo to appeal Chang's extradition to the US.

"The court concluded that the application should be dismissed with costs because it was not in the interests of justice to hear it at this stage," he said.

Today's decision by South Africa's highest court "is the end of a very long judicial process that has dragged on for well over four years with appeals against Manuel Chang's extradition," said jurist André Thomashausen.

"Mozambique's PGR is the party responsible for these delays, having used every imaginable resource," said the South African jurist and retired academic from the University of South Africa (UNISA), who specializes in international and comparative law.

In the last four years, Manuel Chang, who is seen as the "key" figure in the Hidden Debts scandal, has faced two competing requests from the United States and Mozambique for his extradition from South Africa without trial.

At the age of 63, Manuel Chang was arrested on December 29, 2018 at O. R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, en route to Dubai, on the basis of an international arrest warrant issued by the US on December 27, for his alleged involvement in the so-called hidden debts case of 2.7 billion dollars secretly contracted in Mozambique. (noam)