By Khushwant Singh, Court Reporter

A SENIOR immigration officer who is appealing against a two-year jail term, has blamed his former lawyer for advising him to plead guilty to offences he claimed he did not commit.

Immigration and Checkpoints Authority deputy superintendent Thong Sing Hock, 50, the third-ranked officer at the Tuas Checkpoint, had earlier this year admitted to nine charges of abetting and harbouring Ms Song Qinghua, 38, and accessing the ICA's computer systems for personal purposes.

In appealing against the sentence, he told Judge of Appeal V.K. Rajah on Tuesday that he was not aware that she was travelling under a false identity.

Ms Song, who came here to work in 1997, was jailed for three weeks for overstaying in 2001 and deported after that. While back in China, she changed her name to Song Qi and got herself a new identity card and passport.

She met Thong in Beijing between late 2002 and early 2003, and kept in touch with him after his return here. The couple became intimate and visited each other often.

Thong said he only found out about her conviction and the false particulars in her passport after she was detained in February 2006.

He claimed that he had told his lawyer, Mr Chua Si Soon, about this but was advised to plead guity to the charges.

Thong, who hired the lawyer in February 2006, said: 'My lawyer said that this was the easiest way out of the mess that I am in.'

He further claimed that he had accessed the ICA computer records for Ms Song's particulars in 2004 because he had been asked to do so by a law enforcement agency.

While noting that the claim was 'wildly improbable', Justice Rajah said that it was still necessary to follow up and if Thong's assertation holds true, then the convictions could not stand.

But the High Court judge warned Thong that if the allegation proved false, the court would conclude that he had intentionally cast a grave slur on a senior lawyer.

'I would then seriously consider enhancing your sentence,' he told Thong.

Thong stood by what he said and in a rare move, Justice Rajah asked the Attorney-General's Chambers (AGC) to write to Mr Choo for his response and adjourned the hearing on Tuesday.