Media mogul Jimmy Lai was escorted out of a Correctional Services Department vehicle in Hong Kong, China in 2021. His trial finished closing arguments on Wednesday. File Photo by Jerome Favre/EPA
Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai’s lawyer said the judges should not consider the testimony of a prosecution witness because he’s a criminal and “serial liar” in closing arguments Wednesday.
Lai, 77, is on trial for alleged sedition and collusion with foreign powers. The trial has been going on since 2023, and Lai has given a 52-day testimony. Closing arguments began Aug. 18, after a pause for tests on Lai’s heart, and ended Wednesday.
Lai’s defense attorney, Marc Corlett, told the judges on Wednesday that they should be “cautious” in placing “too much faith” in Wayland Chan Tsz-wah’s testimony against Lai. Chan is a “convicted criminal who stands to benefit from his testimony,” Corlett said.
Chan earlier testified that Lai was at a meeting in January 2020 with the lobbying group “Fight for Freedom, Stand with Hong Kong” to incite hostile actions by the West. He said that Lai used the meeting to discuss his four-step lobbying agenda and revealed his master plan to instigate China’s “implosion.”
Lai denied asking the group to push for foreign sanctions. He said the anti-China plan was from activist Finn Lau Cho-dik.
Corlett brought up that former SWHK member Andy Li Yu-hin had testified and didn’t mention the directions that Chan said Lai had given.
Corlett also mentioned that while Lai stays in contact with American political leaders and invites them to his “Live Chat with Jimmy Lai” talk show, it doesn’t prove guilt.
“Merely talking about foreign policy matters with those who are not co-conspirators goes no way to demonstrate what the prosecution needs to prove,” Corlett said.
Lai, a citizen of the United Kingdom, founded Apple Daily, a Chinese-language newspaper published in Hong Kong from 1995 to 2021. The tabloid has been described as anti-government, pro-democracy and anti-China.
He is accused of collusion with foreign forces and sedition. He has been in solitary confinement since December 2020 and faces life in prison.
Prosecutors have accused Lai of requesting foreign countries to engage in “hostile activities,” such as imposing sanctions, against authorities in Hong Kong and China.
He allegedly conspired with senior editorial staff of Apple Daily and was the “mastermind and financial supporter” of the SWHK advocacy group.
Lai denied in court that he had ever sought to influence the Hong Kong policies of other countries via his high-level contacts overseas, including former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and former Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen.
Questioned about meetings with Pence and then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2019, Lai said the meeting with Pence was more of a briefing where he updated him and answered questions about what was going on in Hong Kong.
