World
Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong pro-democracy activist, convicted in landmark national security trial

Updated on: December 15, 2025 / 11:59 AM EST / CBS/AP

Hong Kong — Jimmy Lai, the pro-democracy former Hong Kong media mogul and outspoken critic of Beijing, was convicted in a landmark national security trial in the city's court on Monday, which could send him to prison for the rest of his life.

Three government-vetted judges found Lai, 78, guilty of conspiring with others to collude with foreign forces to endanger national security and conspiracy to publish seditious articles. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.


Then-media mogul Jimmy Lai Chee-ying is detained in Hong Kong on August 10, 2020.
TYRONE SIU/REUTERS

Lai was arrested in August 2020 under a Beijing-imposed national security law that was implemented following massive anti-government protests in 2019. During his five years in custoody, much of it in solitary confinement, Lai has been convicted of several lesser offenses and appears to have grown more frail and thinner.

Lai's trial, conducted without a jury, has been closely monitored by the U.S., Britain, the European Union and political observers as a barometer of media freedom and judicial independence in the former British colony, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

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