In years long trials of Hong Kong high-profile activists, Jimmy Lai had been found guilty of national security offenses on Monday December 15, 2025.
The pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai has been on trial in Hong Kong on national security charges and a final verdict is pending.
According to official reports Lai could face a life sentence in the city’s highest profile trial under a China-imposed national security law.
As reported by the Guardian, the Hong Kong court judges called him a “mastermind” of conspiracies designed to destabilize the Chinese government.
78-years-old Jimmy Lai was charged with one count of conspiracy to publish seditious publications and two counts of conspiracy to foreign collusion, charges brought under the city’s punitive national security law and a British colonial-era sedition law that has been renewed use in recent years by authorities.
Furthermore, three Apply Daily entities–Apple Daily Limited, Apple Daily Printing Limited, and AD Internet Limited (that no longer operates or are non-functional) accused with Lai, were also found guilty of the two foreign collusion charges.
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While few of the right groups condemned the verdict with the committee to protect journalists calling it a “sham conviction.”
Moreover, the Amnesty International has also condemned Jimmy Lai’s conviction as “dismaying” and expressed that it “feels like the death knell for press freedom in Hong Kong, where the essential work of Journalism has been rebranded as a crime.”
The Human Rights watch called the conviction “cruel and a travesty of justice.”
Furthermore, Lai had pleaded not guilty to all charges. He informed the court that he never tried to influence foreign policy or ask foreign officials to take concrete action on Hong Kong.
He also informed the court that he distanced himself from violence and separatism, saying Apple Daily represented Hongkongers’ core values such as “freedom, pursuit of democracy, freedom of speech.”
Following the case, Taiwan has also condemned the guilty verdicts against Jimmy Lai and called for his immediate release.
In addition to that the International Press Institute IPI said the conviction “shows how Hong Kong’s courts have been weaponised to crush independent journalism and voices.”
In October 2025, the International Press Freedom IPI named Lai as “2025 world press freedom hero.”
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IPI’s executive director, Scott Griffen said in a statement, “Lai’s inhumane imprisonment also lays bare how far the Chinese authorities will go to silence independent information and ideas.”
“His unwavering commitment to press freedom—despite years of brutal conditions has made him a powerful symbol for media communities worldwide. It is long past time for his inhumane suffering to end and he must be released,” IPI added.
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Lai trial was one of the last unfinished national security prosecutions of Hong Kong’s high-profile activists over their involvement in the 2019 protests.
One of the lawyers said, “The trajectory of his life reflects the history of Hong Kong itself.”
Hundreds of activists, lawyers and politicians have been pursued and jailed, or chased into exile. But few have captured global attention like Lai, whose life and career has developed in tangent with Hong Kong’s sputtering walk towards democracy, and then its fall.
Prosecutors had accused Lai of using his media outlet, Apple Daily, and foreign political connections to lobby for governments to impose sanctions and other punitive measures on Hong Kong and Chinese authorities.
The latest judgement of the court said, “it was very clear to them that Lai had harboured his hatred and resentment for the People’s Republic of China for many years”, and had been thinking about how the US could apply leverage towards China from long before the national security law was introduced.
“The only reasonable inference we can draw from the preponderance of the evidence, is that the first defendant’s intention, pre or post NSL - was to seek the downfall of the CCP, even though the ultimate cost was the sacrifice of the people of the PRC People’s Republic of China and HKSAR Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.”
Additionally, Hong Kong's chief executive John Lee has welcomed Lai's conviction, noting that his actions had damaged the country's interests and the welfare of Hong Kongers.
"As a society governed by the rule of law, Hong Kong's government... will spare no effort in preventing, stopping and punishing acts that endanger national security," says Hong Kong chief executive John Lee.
