Hong Kong court rejects Jimmy Lai’s bid to drop security charges
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai is already serving time for convictions over his political activism.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
HONG KONG – A Hong Kong court ruled that a national security case against pro-democracy tycoon Jimmy Lai may proceed, rejecting his bid to quash a trial that could see the 76-year-old founder of shuttered Apple Daily locked up for life.
“We rule that the first defendant has a case to answer on all the charges,” Judge Esther Toh said on July 25, referring to Lai.
The case is one of the most high-profile under the Beijing-imposed national security law
Lai is accused of conspiring to collude with foreign forces to sanction China and the former British colony, charges that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison. He also faces one charge of conspiring to publish seditious information.
His lawyer, Mr Robert Pang, had argued that the government failed to provide evidence that Lai’s conspiracy plot remained in place after the national security law came into effective in 2020.
Mr Pang argued that something agreed upon before the national security law would not make it become illegal automatically, but the law made the earlier legal agreements invalid.
“There may be some evidence on some agreement whether to publish certain articles, there may be some evidence on some agreement to work with some organisations, but there’s no evidence after the (national security law) was promulgated,” he said.
“Whatever was agreed previously, when calling for sanctions was perfectly lawful, was not agreed subsequently,” Mr Pang said.
In response to the prosecution’s allegation that Lai used Apple Daily as a platform to conspire, Mr Pang said “that’s a very strange allegation, because Apple Daily is a newspaper, newspapers can have different views on the spectrum”.
Mr Pang stressed that freedom of press is guaranteed under the city’s mini-Constitution, the Basic Law and the Bill of Rights ordinance.
He said several witnesses mentioned that Apple Daily had consulted lawyers on how not to breach the national security law, so there’s “positive evidence” that the agreement was to comply with the law.
Prosecutors rebutted the claim, saying the testimonies from Lai’s associates showed the offending acts did not stop after the legislation was enacted.
A total of eight witnesses have been called by the prosecution, including five defendants who pleaded guilty earlier.
Lai, a British citizen, has been detained in solitary confinement for over three years since December 2020.
He is currently serving a sentence of five years and nine months for fraud after he was convicted of violating a lease contract for Apple Daily’s headquarters.
A guilty verdict and a potential lengthy sentence could worsen Hong Kong’s relations with the United States and other Western governments that have called for Lai’s release
