Hong Kong,(Samajweekly) Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai, who has been in prison since 2020 over charges of colluding with “foreign forces”, pleaded not guilty to three national security charges on Tuesday as his trial resumed earlier in the day.
The landmark trial began on December 18, 2023 and is expected to last some 80 days, the BBC reported.
If found guilty, the 76-year-old could face life imprisonment.
According to the South China Morning Post newspaper, the West Kowloon Court on Tuesday began hearing the prosecution’s opening speech after snubbing a last-ditch attempt by Lai’s legal team to have a sedition charge against him dismissed.
The media mogul is facing two conspiracy charges of collusion with foreign forces for allegedly drawing international sanctions against mainland China and Hong Kong using the now-defunct Apple Daily tabloid newspaper, as well as an anti-Beijing lobbying campaign he was said to have funded.
A third conspiracy charge of sedition alleges that the publishing mogul incited public hatred towards the authorities in the wake of the 2019 anti-government protests.
Lai, a UK citizen, was arrested under the National Security Law (NSL), introduced by China in 2020 in response to massive pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, insisting that the law was necessary to quell unrest.
An outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party, he is one of the most high-profile people to be arrested under the NSL.
Before Lai was detained, he was often at the frontline of pro-democracy protests, such as the 2014 Umbrella Movement and the 2019 demonstrations against an extradition bill.
Since his arrest in August 2020, he has been held in solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison.
