UK police say death of Hong Kong spying suspect Matthew Trickett ‘not suspicious’, days after city official calls for clarity

“Mr Trickett’s family are being supported by specialist officers, our thoughts remain with them, and we would kindly ask that their privacy is respected at this difficult time.”

The 37-year-old ex-Royal Marine was among three suspects earlier charged with assisting an overseas intelligence service and foreign interference between December 2023 and May of this year.

Trickett, alongside Bill Yuen Chung-biu, an office manager at the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London, and Peter Wai Chi-leung, 38, a director of a private security firm, were released on bail by a court on May 13.

But he was later found dead in Grenfell Park in Maidenhead, a kilometre away from his correspondence address in the town west of London, last Sunday. Police at the time classified the death as “unexplained”.

Hong Kong Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Algernon Yau Ying-wah earlier this week met with a senior British diplomat in the city to call for more details on the investigation into Trickett’s death to prevent “unwarranted speculation”.

British prosecutors on Friday dropped espionage charges against Trickett.

The other two defendants will go on trial in Kingston-upon-Thames Crown Court on February 10 of next year, with the hearing expected to last up to five weeks.