Associated Press photo.
Hong Kong: Jimmy Lai, the pro-democracy former Hong Kong media mogul and outspoken critic of Beijing, was convicted in a landmark national security trial in the city's court on Monday, which could send him to prison for the rest of his life, the Associated Press reported.
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 following massive anti-government protests in 2019. During his five years in custody, much of it in solitary confinement, Lai has been convicted of several lesser offences and appears to have grown more frail and thinner.
Lai's trial, conducted without a jury, has been closely monitored by the US, 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.
The court found that Lai had extended a “constant invitation” to the US to help bring down the Chinese government with the excuse of helping Hong Kongers.
But the judges ruled that Lai had never wavered in his intention to destabilise the ruling Chinese Communist Party, “continuing though in a less explicit way."
The court also found that Lai was the mastermind of the conspiracies. The judges ruled that Lai's only intent, both before and after the security law, was to seek the downfall of the ruling Communist Party, even at the sacrifice of the people of China and Hong Kong.