SINGAPORE - A district judge here has cleared the way for a fugitive in Singapore to be extradited to the United States to face charges on three alleged sexual offences against a five-year-old girl.

Named Chester Yang Yang, Jr, @ “Chester Yang, Jr”, “Pian He Yang” and “Tian He Yang” in court documents, he was ordered to be held in prison pending his removal under the Extradition Act.

His citizenship was not disclosed in the court’s decision grounds.

“After hearing the evidence presented by the state and Yang, as well as their arguments, I found that Yang was liable to be surrendered to the US in respect of the three charges,” said District Judge Loh Hui-min.

“Accordingly, I issued a warrant committing him to prison to await the warrant from the minister for his surrender,” she added in judgment grounds issued on Oct 3.

Yang was arrested in Singapore on May 31.

The alleged offences occurred in the US state of California on April 21, 2017, when the victim and her sister were taken to a church by their mother for a wedding rehearsal, noted the judge in summarising the state’s evidence.

Yang is alleged to have touched the girl’s genitals and committed lewd and obscene acts.

The victim’s mother had met one Tracie Yang, who introduced her to her father, said to be an Asian man in his 50s.

Tracie later confirmed that she was at the rehearsal and that her father, one Pian He Yang, was walking around the campus where the church was located during the rehearsal.

The victim stated that after her mother had gone downstairs for the music rehearsal, the man asked her to go over to “a corner that no one can see”, where the alleged offences occurred. The victim told her father about the incident a month later.

Yang, who “strenuously resisted” the extradition bid, accepted that he was present then and had interacted with the victim. He denied all the alleged acts and said the victim had approached him, and that he had lifted her up by her armpits.

This exposed her belly button, and he blew air on her tummy to make her laugh.

Judge Loh found the state had made out a prima facie case to support Yang’s extradition. “There was nothing in Yang’s evidence that gave this court reasonable basis to find that the evidence adduced by the state was inherently incredible,” she said.

“As I emphasised to Yang at the hearing, he remains free to pursue his defence at trial, which will be the appropriate forum to test the credibility of the witnesses and assess the quality of the evidence against him.”

The case is the first reported extradition application for a fugitive in Singapore wanted for child sex offences in the US.