After a trial spanning 156 days, a three-judge panel of the Court of First Instance of the High Court has delivered its verdicts in the national security trial of the Apple Daily founder, Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, on Monday. It found him guilty of the three charges he faced, with the judges providing detailed reasons. They were satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that he was guilty of two offenses of conspiring to collude with foreign forces to endanger national security (contrary to the Hong Kong National Security Law, Article 29), and one charge of conspiring to publish seditious materials (contrary to the British-era Crimes Ordinance, Section 159).
Also convicted of two of the charges (collusion and sedition) were three companies Lai owned: Apple Daily Ltd, Apple Daily Printed Ltd, and AD Internet Ltd, which facilitated his criminality.
The convictions followed a trial conducted with complete propriety, in accordance with the traditions of the common law world. Lai was represented by a first-class legal team (including Senior Counsel Robert Pang Yiu-hung and King’s Counsel Marc Corlett), which rigorously challenged the prosecution’s evidence and took every possible point on his behalf. He was able to give and call evidence, and was only convicted once the judges were sure of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt — a high threshold for prosecutors to achieve.
As the judges explained, Lai was not being tried for his views or beliefs, but for what they found to be hostile conspiracies aimed at China, whose political system he loathed. Although his backers have sought to portray him as a champion of press freedom, this was delusional. The evidence showed he was at the heart of a plot to use the media (and others) to destabilize China, and was committed to advancing United States interests at the expense of his own country’s. The judges concluded that not only was Lai obsessed with making China subservient to the US, but also wanted to turn the country into a “lackey of the West”.
In a striking analogy, the court likened Lai’s actions to those of an American who asked Russia for help in overthrowing the US government under the guise of helping the state of California, which was spot-on. Any country in the world would have come down like a ton of bricks on any of its citizens who behaved as Lai did — in the US, they would likely face the death penalty for betraying the country.
The prosecution patiently demonstrated, step by step, that Lai, the mastermind, together with various accomplices, including paralegal Wayland Chan Tsz-wah and activist Andy Li Yu-hin (who repented of their crimes and testified against him), used Apple Daily and “Stand with Hong Kong, Fight for Freedom” (SWHK), a subversive entity, to lobby foreign countries, including the US, Britain and Japan, for nefarious purposes. He wanted them to impose sanctions, blockades, and other hostile measures against China and the Hong Kong SAR, with a view to harming both and even effecting regime change. He was up to his neck in their heinous activities, and when he was arrested in August 2020, it was, the judges found, “a heavy blow to the international front of SWHK as it would be difficult to obtain any further information of the US Government.”
The rights of people undergoing criminal proceedings in Hong Kong have always been scrupulously protected by the Judiciary, and Lai’s case is no exception. He has had his day in court, and the judges were convinced of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Although his foreign backers may be upset, justice has prevailed, and the Judiciary has more than proved its worth
In his evidence, Li revealed Lai’s ties with — and financial backing of — the newly created Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), which specializes in spreading anti-China propaganda in national parliaments and trying to frustrate China’s progress. Li, the co-founder of SWHK, which sought to wreck the “one country, two systems” policy in Hong Kong in 2019-20, also described his contacts with IPAC’s founder, Luke de Pulford, notably over the imposition of sanctions. He said De Pulford, a Hong Kong Watch functionary and rabid SWHK supporter, told him he was “briefing Jimmy L”. (The court was satisfied that Lai was “receiving updates” from De Pulford on IPAC’s activities.)
The prosecution also proved that Lai, hoping to destabilize both, stoked hatred of the authorities in both Beijing and Hong Kong through 161 hostile op-eds published in Apple Daily. Although Lai’s “international legal team”, led by the London-based barrister Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, had told the world that their client was being charged with “conspiracy to commit journalism”, few were fooled. They certainly could not pull the wool over the eyes of Justices Esther Toh Lye-ping, Susana Maria D’Almada Remedios and Alex Lee Wan-tang, the experienced jurists who tried Lai and determined where exactly the truth lay.
Although Gallagher bleated away endlessly about Lai’s prosecution being “politically motivated” (a fallacy shamelessly regurgitated by British politicians like Rishi Sunak), his legal team made no such claims at trial. This was unsurprising, as Gallagher could not substantiate her claim, let alone produce any firm evidence for his lawyers to deploy in court. If she had any such evidence, it could have assisted Lai greatly, resulting in the staying of the proceedings against him, but it was only a cheap smear.
This should also have been obvious to Yvette Cooper, Britain’s foreign secretary, who repeated Gallagher’s sound bite following Lai’s convictions. If nothing else, this showed she had not bothered to read the judgment, or even a precis. She then compounded her fatuity by demanding Lai’s “immediate release”, indicating she knows nothing about how criminal justice systems work (a trait shared with many of her colleagues).
In the event, Lai’s trial was not conducted in Gallagher’s fantasy world, but on the basis of hard facts in the cold light of day.
Like other jurists, each of the three judges took an oath upon appointment to “safeguard the law and administer justice without fear or favor, self-interest or deceit”, and their judgment confirms their adherence to these obligations. They were confronted with a mass of evidence (including from Lai, who testified for 52 days), which they have carefully evaluated, together with the detailed submissions from both legal teams.
The reasons for the convictions are clear, cogent and compelling, and the verdicts follow logically from the meticulous analysis of the issues.
As anybody reading the judgment will be able to see, the evidence against Lai was overwhelming. And as any lawyer worth his salt will be able to confirm, it would have been perverse if the judges had not convicted him. Whereas the prosecution witnesses, the judges concluded, were “solid and irrefutable”, Lai’s testimony was “contradictory, inconsistent, evasive, and unreliable”, and the court’s duty was clear.
Although there were squalid attempts from afar to unnerve the trial judges, they refused to buckle and remained true to their oaths. They have fearlessly upheld the rule of law and shown that attempts by hostile forces to pervert the course of public justice are doomed to failure.
One such attempt involved the US-based Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation (CFHKF), headed by Mark Clifford, who previously worked for Lai as a director of Apple Daily’s parent company, Next Digital (and campaigns on his behalf).
When the CFHKF produced an ugly little report in May last year maligning Hong Kong’s Judiciary, it was co-authored by Samuel Bickett, an American lawyer who was deported from Hong Kong in 2022 following a conviction for assaulting a police officer. He then sought revenge by urging the US Congress to impose punitive sanctions on Hong Kong’s judges, which Clifford, who recruited him, clearly relished. He even claimed the Judiciary “supports the regime by manipulating evidence and processes against dissidents”, which made him a perfect fit at CFHKF. However, as Clifford now knows, not even the venom of vipers like Bickett can poison Hong Kong’s judicial system or corrupt its judges.
Thereafter, in May 2025, three US senators, Dan Sullivan, John Curtis and Jeff Merkley, realizing that Clifford had got nowhere, introduced the Hong Kong Judicial Sanctions Act into the US Congress, listing 45 judges and prosecutors whom they said should be sanctioned (based partly on information reportedly originating from Bickett). Included in the list were the names of the three judges trying Jimmy Lai, and this threat was clearly calculated to cow them and derail the trial.
On Dec 9, moreover, in a final desperate throw of the dice, the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China, another hate-filled propaganda outfit, called for the imposition of sanctions on Hong Kong’s judges (and other officials).
Although these repeated threats were contemptible assaults on the rule of law, which might have affected lesser mortals, the judges remained focused on their task. They have thereby ensured that the legal order was not destabilized by people who wish China ill.
The judges also refused to be distracted by the ill-judged calls from a series of British politicians for Lai’s “immediate release”. They included Rishi Sunak, David Cameron, David Lammy, Catherine West and Keir Starmer. The calls by Lammy and Starmer (subsequently echoed by their colleague, Yvette Cooper, a non-lawyer) were particularly reprehensible, as both are barristers and knew better than anyone that what they were seeking was impossible. As Lai was a convicted fraudster serving his sentence and also undergoing a national security trial, the judges had no authority to release him. Indeed, they could only have released him if they had violated their oaths of office and acted illegally. (Whatever may be the position elsewhere, such things are anathema in Hong Kong’s legal system, as Lammy and Starmer now know.)
The judges’ resilience, therefore, reflects well on the city’s common law system. It shows that even when powerful politicians in the US and the UK try to disrupt the course of public justice, they will not succeed. The judges have set an example that will undoubtedly inspire jurists in other common law jurisdictions, if not everywhere. They have also conducted themselves in the highest traditions of the (Rome-based) International Association of Judges, founded in 1953 and committed to judicial independence ever since.
The judges’ professionalism in the face of foreign pressure will also reinforce Hong Kong’s credentials as one of the world’s highest-ranking jurisdictions for adherence to the rule of law. Indeed, in the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index 2025, the city was ranked 24th out of 143 places surveyed, ahead, for example, of the US at 27th. Given the judges’ exemplary conduct, the Index’s New York-based compilers would be wholly justified in awarding Hong Kong an even higher ranking next time round.
After Lai has been sentenced (early next year), he can, given that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights applies in Hong Kong (Basic Law, Art.39), pursue his various legal rights. If aggrieved by his convictions or sentences, he can appeal to the Court of Appeal. If unsuccessful, he can then seek leave to appeal to the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal. At trial, the appellate courts will ensure that his interests are fully protected and that there are just outcomes.
The rights of people undergoing criminal proceedings in Hong Kong have always been scrupulously protected by the Judiciary, and Lai’s case is no exception. He has had his day in court, and the judges were convinced of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Although his foreign backers may be upset, justice has prevailed, and the Judiciary has more than proved its worth.
The author is a criminal justice analyst and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong SAR.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
