Hong Kong pro-democracy mogul found guilty

Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai, 78, faced charges in landmark national security case.

- By Kanis LEUNG

Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong’s pro-democracy media mogul and outspoken critic of Beijing, was convicted Monday in a landmark national security trial, which could send him to prison for the rest of his life.

Three government-vetted judges found Lai, 78, guilty of conspiring with others to collude with foreign forces to endanger national security and conspiracy to publish seditious articles. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Lai was arrested in August 2020 under a Beijing-imposed national security law that was implemented after massive anti-government protests in 2019. Lai has spent five years in custody, much of it in solitary confinement, and his family said his health has declined rapidly. He was previously convicted of several lesser offenses related to fraud allegations and his actions in 2019.

Lai’s trial, conducted in a Hong Kong court without a jury, has been closely monitored by the U.S., Britain, the European Union and political observers as a barometer of media freedom and judicial independence in the former British colony, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

His son Sebastien Lai said the family had expected a guilty verdict, “but that doesn’t make it any less devastating.”

“In the 800-page verdict they have there is essentially nothing, nothing that incriminates him,” he told reporters in London.

“This is a perfect example of how the national security law has been molded and weaponized against someone who essentially said stuff that they didn’t like.”

His daughter Claire said she dreams of being reunited with her father without being watched over by guards.

“But I think what today has proven is that that reunion that I dream of, it won't be through the once extremely promising but now very, very highly compromised Hong Kong legal system,” she said in Washington, where she has been rallying support for her father’s case.

Conspiracy and secessionist charges