A Hong Kong court on Monday sentenced Jimmy Lai, a prominent critic of Beijing whose pro-democracy newspaper closed in 2021 following police raids and arrests, to 20 years in prison under the city’s national security law.
Lai, the former publisher of Apple Daily, was found guilty in December of conspiring to publish seditious material and conspiring to “collude with a foreign country or external elements.” The verdict is widely seen as a landmark ruling and a major blow to press freedom in the special administrative region.
Judges deemed the foreign-collusion charges “grave” and identified Lai as the “mastermind” behind the offenses, while granting limited mitigation for his age, health, and time spent in solitary confinement.
He is already serving a separate 5-year, 9-month sentence for an unrelated fraud case, and the court ordered 18 years of the new term to run consecutively to that previous sentence.
