HONG KONG (AP) – Attorneys for a jailed pro-democracy Hong Kong writer have requested an pressing assembly with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a senior member of his worldwide authorized crew mentioned on Tuesday.
Jimmy Lai, the 75-year-old founding father of the now-defunct Apple Each day newspaper, was arrested in 2020 in a crackdown on town’s pro-democracy motion. He’s preventing fees of collusion underneath a Beijing-imposed nationwide safety legislation and faces life in jail if convicted.
Final month, the crew urged the UK authorities to take fast motion to safe Lai’s launch forward of his high-profile nationwide safety trial after he was sentenced to 5 years and 9 months in jail Fraud allegations associated to tenancy legislation violations. The request for a gathering is the most recent try by his authorized crew to induce the UK authorities to intervene within the case of Lai, who’s each a Hong Kong and British citizen.
Caoilfhionn Gallagher, chief of the crew, mentioned Lai’s son was in London this week to induce British officers to guard his father.
“He faces ‘lawfare’ – a number of prosecutions and lawsuits, all aimed toward silencing and discrediting him and sending a transparent message to others that they need to not dare criticize the Chinese language or Hong Kong authorities,” she mentioned in an e-mail reply to The Related Press.
British officers didn’t instantly touch upon Tuesday.
Lai is accused of conspiring with others to demand the imposition of sanctions or blockades, or participating in hostile actions in opposition to Hong Kong or China. He additionally faces fees of colluding with overseas forces to hazard nationwide safety and a separate cost of sedition underneath a colonial-era legislation more and more used to quash dissent.
His trial, initially scheduled to start out final month, was postponed to September after the Hong Kong chief requested Beijing for a choice this might successfully forestall Lai from hiring a veteran British lawyer, Timothy Owen, to characterize him.
Britain, together with different Western nations, has criticized China’s crackdown on political freedoms in Hong Kong, which was handed over to China by Britain in 1997, with Beijing promising to uphold Western-style freedoms underneath a “one nation, two programs” framework.