The Hong Kong Police Force’s National Security Department applauded the High Court’s sentencing on Monday of former media magnate Jimmy Lai Chee-ying to 20 years in prison, shortly after the sentence was handed down by the city’s court.
Addressing reporters following the sentencing outside West Kowloon Court, Chief Superintendent of Police Li Kwai-wah said that the punishment recognizes the gravity of Lai’s offenses and clearly highlights Lai’s position as the “prime culprit” and “mastermind” behind the crimes.
“The 20-year prison term is well deserved (by Lai),” Li said.
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The sentencing followed a December conviction in which Lai —founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily — was found guilty on two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and one count of conspiracy to publish seditious materials.
“The court has conducted the legal proceedings with the most rigorous standards and in a process of absolute openness and transparency,” Li said told reporters.
Li cited the five-and-a-half-year timeline from Lai’s arrest to the ruling, saying that the sheer scale of the trial — 156 days of public hearings, 52 days of testimony from Lai, 2,220 exhibits, tens of thousands of documents, and 17 witnesses — showed it to be “the finest embodiment of Hong Kong’s spirit of the rule of law”.
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According to Li, Lai actively lobbied for foreign sanctions against his own country and city, and, through his media network, cultivated radicals, propagated incitement and sought to collude “from within and without”. “These are actions utterly contemptible,” Li said.
Lai’s eight co-defendants in the case — all of whom had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to collude with foreign forces — received prison terms ranging from six years and nine months to a decade.
Li said their lighter prison terms demonstrate Article 33 of the HKSAR National Security Law in practice, which allows for sentence mitigation when defendants report and help verify others’ crimes.
