Dutch court says Asian ‘El Chapo’ can be extradited to Australia

Tse Chi Lop says he is not a crystal meth kingpin

There was high security in Rotterdam for the extradition hearing of Tse Chi Lop (EPA)

The Netherlands on Friday agreed to extradite the alleged leader of an Asian drug syndicate, Tse Chi Lop, to Australia.

The Chinese-born Canadian national, who has been compared to Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, was arrested in January at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport at the request of Australian police while he was in transit from Taiwan to Canada.

The Dutch government will take a final decision on extradition.

The defence said it would appeal, and the Dutch Supreme Court will decide the matter.

Chi Lop, who is alleged to have led a drug syndicate dominant in the Asia-Pacific crystal methamphetamine trade, says he is not a drug kingpin.

He has denied wrongdoing and contested his arrest and accused the Australian authorities of engineering his expulsion so that he could be detained in the Netherlands, which has a more favourable extradition treaty with Australia.

Chi Lop did not appear in court. He remains in a high-security prison while the appeal is pending.

"The court ruled today that if there is a problem with this extradition, it will be taken care of in Australia itself, " Chi Lop's lawyer, Andre Seebregts, said. "We will now be going to the supreme court in the Netherlands to take our case there."

The exact details of the appeal hearing in the supreme court are unknown. Any handover would be expected to take months.

Judges urged the justice minister, who will have the final say if the Supreme Court approves extradition, to seek assurances from Australia that Tse would not be given a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

Jeremy Douglas, Southeast Asia and Pacific representative for the U.N. drugs agency UNODC, told Reuters in 2019 that Tse Chi Lop is in the league of Latin American drug lords like El Chapo and Pablo Escobar.

Includes reporting by Reuters