"This is a country that, I say ... are one of the world's worst mass murderers in the history of mankind, and then they give assurance that your interrogation is going to be videoed. Well, what is that worth?"
Ellis asked why Kim could not be interrogated in New Zealand.
He said there were procedures in place where Chinese judges could be disciplined if they came to a not-guilty verdict, but sometimes the verdict would not even be decided by the judge who tried the case, but instead by a political committee.
"He cannot possibly get a fair trial ... it's just impossible.
"They can't give any assurance they're going to give a fair trial because they need to change the entire structure of the Chinese judicial system.
"We wouldn't send someone to Hitler or Stalin - well, why would we send someone to China?"
Accepting assurances Kim would not be tortured also made New Zealand complicit in the many other cases of torture that it does not protest, he said.
"You can have an individual assurance Mr Kim won't be tortured, but never mind anybody else."
If China wanted its assurances to be relied upon, it should stop acting like "barbarians pre-Christ".
Co-counsel Ben Keith said they had been unable to find any similar extradition matters in case law.
"Democracies don't extradite to China," he said.
He said there were systemic problems with the country's judicial procedures, and that the investigation conducted 11 years ago when the death happened would also have been systematically flawed.
Adams had "closed her eyes" to evidence about China's practices, he said.
Peiyun Chen, a 20-year-old sex worker, was found beaten and strangled, her body dumped in wasteland, but Kim had left for South Korea before officials sought him for questioning.
He was arrested in New Zealand in 2011 and spent five years in a New Zealand jail, without trial, before being released on bail last year.
Adams agreed to send Kim to China to face trial over the murder, after Chinese officials promised he would not be tortured or executed and that his fundamental rights - such as the right to remain silent - would be protected.
But Kim successfully challenged that decision by judicial review, and Justice Jillian Mallon found Adams had been too willing to take Chinese officials at their word.
Justice Mallon agreed, saying there were "substantial grounds for believing torture remained a real issue in China".
She ordered the minister to seek more information and reconsider her decision. Adams again decided in 2016 to have Kim extradited, and he again called for a judicial review, but that was dismissed.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs has promised dedicated monitors in Shanghai will check on Kim at least once every 48 hours during the investigation, and at least once every 15 days during the trial.
It has also been made clear that if the death penalty was used there would be "repercussions for the bilateral relationship between China and New Zealand, and China's international reputation", Justice Mallon noted.
