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Hong Kong Law and Crime

Stage set for Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai’s marathon trial on national security charges

After three postponements, 80-day trial before three-judge court is scheduled to start on December 18
Former allies of Apple Daily founder are slated to testify for prosecution in case condemned by the West

Jimmy Lai trial

Brian Wong

Published: 8:30am, 17 Dec 2023

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Three years have passed since Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai Chee-ying was arrested, and the outspoken Beijing critic and anti-government activist has remained locked up awaiting a national security trial.

There have been numerous international appeals for his release but his trial, postponed three times, is due to start on Monday, with Lai accused of conducting an anti-China campaign buoyed by foreign powers.

The 76-year-old Apple Daily founder is the most prominent figure to be prosecuted under the national security law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing in 2020 to ban acts of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.

Jimmy Lai’s trial will be held at West Kowloon Court. Photo: AP

He faces three conspiracy charges relating to sedition and collusion with foreign forces for allegedly attracting international sanctions against Hong Kong and the central authorities and inciting public hatred in the wake of anti-government protests in 2019.

He will be tried at West Kowloon Court by a panel of three High Court judges approved by the city leader to oversee cases pertaining to the country’s interests. The marathon case is scheduled to take 80 days.

Justice minister Paul Lam Ting-kwok signed an order in July last year for the trial to proceed without a jury on grounds including “involvement of foreign factors” and a “real risk that the due administration of justice might be impaired”.

The trial, which also targets three Apple Daily-related companies, has been postponed three times since December 1 last year.

The full extent of Lai’s alleged transgressions is still under wraps, but security minister Chris Tang Ping-keung has maintained that the trial would reveal how “bad” they were.

In related cases where Lai’s co-defendants pleaded guilty, it was said that he drummed up hostile activities against Hong Kong and mainland China by using his tabloid newspaper as a platform for anti-government propaganda, and funding international lobbying efforts to attract foreign sanctions.

Police patrols, sniffer dogs and X-ray checks at Hong Kong court for Lai trial

Prosecutors in those cases said Lai’s ultimate goal was to achieve chi bao, interpreted in court as a desire “to bring down the Chinese government by causing administrative and economic turmoil in China”.

The term comprises two Chinese characters – one for the derogatory “Shina”, a slur used mainly in wartime Japan against Chinese people, and the other for “explosion”.

Prosecution documents said an international campaign titled “Fight for Freedom, Stand with Hong Kong” (SWHK), reportedly developed “a cohesive network” of politicians in the United States, United Kingdom and Japan thanks to support from Lai and his right-hand man Mark Simon, a former US intelligence agent whose father also worked for the CIA.

Justice minister Paul Lam signed an order in July last year for the trial to proceed without a jury. Photo: Nora Tam

Prosecutors accused Lai of using Apple Daily to seek intervention from the US, Britain, European Union, Canada, Germany and Taiwan.

The purported consequences included sanctions by the US, such as the 2020 Hong Kong Autonomy Act targeting individuals and banks deemed to have contributed to the erosion of the city’s autonomy, and suspension of extradition arrangements between Hong Kong and foreign countries.

Lai was initially charged with a fourth count of collusion over alleged requests made on Twitter, now renamed X, and in various interviews and newspaper commentaries.

His lawyers said prosecutors were no longer pursuing that charge.

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Former Apple Daily staff plead guilty to conspiracy under Hong Kong national security law

During a bail hearing in December 2020, a High Court judge noted that Lai’s remarks in the original charge appeared to be “comments and criticisms rather than requests”.

But part of the evidence in that charge was used to support the conspiracy allegations related to Apple Daily, the Post found after comparing different versions of prosecutors’ court filings.

One example is the “Live Chat with Jimmy Lai” show hosted on Apple Daily’s website, where Lai allegedly instigated hatred towards Beijing and appealed for continued support for the newspaper’s “unlawful activities”.

Details of the show were highlighted in a prosecution summary used to indict six Apple Daily senior executives, who were convicted of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces upon their own confession in August last year.

Editor-in-chief Ryan Law Wai-kwong, executive editor-in-chief Lam Man-chung, publisher Cheung Kim-hung, associate publisher Chan Pui-man, and editorial writers Fung Wai-kong and Yeung Ching-kee, are awaiting sentencing behind bars. They have been remanded since their prosecution in 2021.

Cheung, Chan and Yeung are among six of Lai’s former allies who have agreed to testify for the prosecution at the tycoon’s trial.

Hong Kong judge orders Jimmy Lai to pay costs for two ‘unarguable’ legal challenges

The newspaper’s chief financial officer and chief operating officer Royston Chow Tat-kuen, who was not charged with a national security offence, is also expected to testify against his former boss as part of a non-prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice.

Last year, Chow helped prosecutors secure convictions of Lai and Apple Daily’s chief administrative officer Wong Wai-keung in a fraud case stemming from the paper’s improper use of office space. Lai was jailed for five years and nine months in that case.

Also on the witness list are two SWHK core members, paralegal Chan Tsz-wah and activist Andy Li Yu-hin, who was among 12 Hongkongers captured by mainland coastguards in a failed bid to escape to Taiwan by boat. The pair are in custody and awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to conspiracy to collude with foreign forces.

A third alleged member of the group, fugitive activist Finn Lau Cho-dik, is named as a conspirator and wanted by national security police.

The trial is expected to begin with Lai’s counsel making submissions on the court’s power to hear the sedition complaint. His counsel has argued that the charge was made after the expiry of a six-month statutory time limit for filing a criminal complaint.

Jimmy Lai, pictured in prison in July, is the most prominent figure to be prosecuted under the national security law. Photo: AP

Lai was first arrested in February 2020, four months before the enactment of the national security law, for taking part in a 2019 rally held without police approval. A parallel investigation delved into a rival newspaper’s complaint he had threatened one of its reporters in June 2017.

He was acquitted after being tried for criminal intimidation of the reporter, but his subsequent legal battles were less successful.

The tycoon was taken into custody in December 2020 over the fraud case. He secured temporary release and was placed under house arrest later that month, only for the city’s top court to revoke his bail eight days later.

A District Court judge handed Lai his first criminal conviction in April 2021 for his role in two illegal protests in 2019. His overall sentence eventually totalled 20 months as he was found guilty of unauthorised assembly charges related to two other banned public meetings.

In December last year, after he completed his jail term, a separate District Court judge sentenced him to a further 69 months’ jail in the fraud case.

His last-ditch bid to have the national security case dropped was dismissed by the three-judge panel in May this year.

Hong Kong hits back as Catholic leaders attack ‘persecution’ of Jimmy Lai

The three judges overseeing Lai’s trial are Madam Justices Esther Toh Lye-ping and Susana D’Almada Remedios, and Mr Justice Alex Lee Wan-tang.

They noted that there had been threats by “some foreign elements” to impose sanctions on judicial officers at all levels who dealt with security law cases.

“Needless to say, the threat would have no effect whatsoever on judges’ adherence to their judicial oath,” they said in a 60-page judgment.

Lai had a brief taste of success when he persuaded the Court of Final Appeal to allow him to be represented by British King’s Counsel Timothy Owen in the collusion trial.

The city’s judges said Owen’s involvement and expertise would add to the development of national security jurisprudence, but their move was heavily criticised by those loyal to Beijing, including former city leader Leung Chun-ying.

In response to a request by Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu to explain the security legislation, the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, China’s top legislative body, ruled late last year that Hong Kong’s Committee for Safeguarding National Security was entitled to determine whether Owen could take up the case.

Prosecutors have accused Lai of using the now-folded Apple Daily to seek intervention from the US, Britain, European Union, Canada, Germany and Taiwan. Photo: EPA-EFE

The national security committee, chaired by Lee, decided that Owen’s representation would pose a national security risk, effectively barring him from taking part in the pending trial.

Lai has sought to bring Owen back by applying for a judicial review of the local committee’s decision. That was rejected by the Court of First Instance. An appeal is scheduled for next April, but it is unlikely to impact the imminent trial.

Apple Daily raised the ire of Beijing with its unrelenting criticism of local and central authorities. The newspaper closed in June 2021 after the authorities froze HK$18 million (US$2.3 million) worth of Lai’s assets.

Queues stretched outside news-stands across the city in the early hours of June 24, 2021, waiting to buy one of a million copies of Apple Daily’s last edition. Some bought multiple copies.

Lai has been vilified over the years by local and national authorities and state-controlled media, portrayed as an “extremist”, a “traitor”, “an agent and a pawn of the US” and “national scum and [a] Hong Kong sinner”.

His prosecution triggered an international uproar, with Western government officials, Catholic Church leaders, lawyers and human rights observers demanding his release.

Chinese embassy condemns UK’s ‘flagrant interference’ in Hong Kong affairs

Lai’s son, Sebastian Lai Sung-yan, has described his father’s case as a “show trial” and feared he could die in prison if the Western world did not do more to secure his freedom.

He met British Foreign Secretary David Cameron on December 12. While Cameron was “unable to make any immediate commitments”, the younger Lai said he was reassured to hear that his father’s case was “a priority for the UK government”.

The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said in a social media post on the same day that it “opposes the national security law and will continue to stand by Jimmy Lai and the people of [Hong Kong]”.

The Chinese embassy in Britain denounced the country’s “flagrant interference” in the city’s internal affairs.

International accolades paying tribute to Lai’s activism have added to the calls to free the tycoon.

He has received numerous overseas press freedom awards, and was one of six Hong Kong activists nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Earlier this month, the French city of Lyon awarded him honorary citizenship in recognition of what it cited as his fight for press freedom.

Hong Kong court backs Jimmy Lai, 6 others in attempt to overturn convictions

Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing politicians have not been moved, with three heavyweights suggesting earlier this year that a mainland court could take over Lai’s case. It was not the first time such a proposal was made.

After Lai was briefly released on bail in December 2020, People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, warned that the mainland had “sufficient legal grounds” to assume jurisdiction of the high-profile proceedings.

But Beijing has so far refrained from stepping into the fray.

When prompted by Hong Kong leader Lee to determine foreign lawyers’ standing in national security cases, the NPC Standing Committee chose to leave the matter in the hands of local authorities.

That ruling caught some by surprise, but a mainland insider explained that the decision was intended to avoid creating a negative perception of Hong Kong’s judicial independence.

In light of the wide attention the case has drawn, the judiciary has set aside 388 seats for members of the public to attend the trial.

Seventy spectators will observe proceedings from the main courtroom’s public gallery, while the rest will watch a live broadcast.