Jimmy Lai trial: closing arguments begin in Hong Kong trial of pro-democracy media mogul
The 77-year-old founder of the Apple Daily newspaper is charged with foreign collusion under Hong Kong's national security law, which Beijing imposed following huge and sometimes violent pro-democracy protests in 2019.
Lai has been kept behind bars since December 2020, reportedly in solitary confinement, with Western nations and rights groups calling for his release.
Aside from the collusion offence – which could land him in prison for life – Lai is also charged with 'seditious publication' related to 161 op-eds he allegedly wrote.
The tycoon gave spirited courtroom testimony over more than 50 days during the trial, fielding questions about his political ideology, management style and overseas contacts.
Lai described himself at least twice as a 'political prisoner', which drew sharp rebukes from the three-judge panel.
Hong Kong authorities have repeatedly rejected criticism related to Lai, saying last month that his case was 'handled strictly on the basis of evidence and in accordance with the law'.
Antoine Bernard of Reporters Without Borders said on Tuesday that Lai's treatment 'exposes the authorities' ruthless determination to silence and suppress one of the most prominent advocates for press freedom amid Hong Kong's rapidly deteriorating media landscape'.
Prosecutors showed the court a diagram titled '(Lai's) external political connections', arguing that he had exerted influence in the United States, Britain and Taiwan.
It featured headshots of top US political figures, including president Donald Trump, his former deputy Mike Pence and ex-secretary of state Mike Pompeo. Former Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen was also among those named.
Two prosecution witnesses, Chan Tsz-wah and Andy Li, also accused Lai of financially backing the advocacy group 'Stand With Hong Kong' to run overseas newspaper ads supporting the 2019 protests.
Lai has denied calling for sanctions against China and Hong Kong and said he never advocated separatism.
Four other people who held senior roles in Apple Daily were called upon by prosecutors to testify about how Lai shaped the outlet's political stance.
The mogul said his newspaper championed democracy and freedom, adding that he had always disavowed violence.
'The core values of Apple Daily are actually the core values of the people of Hong Kong... (including) rule of law, freedom, pursuit of democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly,' Lai said on the first day of his testimony.
Apple Daily was forced to close in 2021 after police raids and the arrests of its senior editors.
Lai is a British citizen and his son Sebastien reiterated in March calls for British prime minister Keir Starmer to do more, saying: 'I don't want my father to die in jail.'
Judges have indicated that a verdict could be reached by October.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘A structural dependence on heavy industry': can South Korea wean itself off fossil fuels?
GDP per capita per annum: US$34,640 (global average $14,210) Total annual tonnes CO2: 577.42.m (tenth highest country) CO2 per capita: 11.16 metric tonnes (global average 4.7) Most recent NDC (carbon plan): 2021 Climate plans: highly insufficient On a cool early morning on South Korea's east coast, Eunbin Kang pointed to a monument to a vanishing era. The 2.1GW Samcheok Blue power plant which came online in South Korea in January looms out of the headlands above a beach made internationally famous by a K-pop album shoot. It is expected to emit 13m tonnes of CO2 annually, while its lifespan could stretch beyond 2050, the year by which the country has pledged to reach carbon neutrality. The country was building coal-fired power plants, said Kang, an activist who heads the Youth Climate Emergency Action group and relocated to this city to oppose the facility, 'even as the climate emergency demands an immediate halt to fossil fuel expansion'. But Samcheok is not an outlier. It is a symbol of the stark climate contradiction at the heart of the world's 12th largest economy, celebrated for its technological prowess in semiconductors and electric vehicle batteries, yet among the top ten worst global climate performers. Despite South Korea's impressive climate pledges to reach net zero by 2050 with a 40% reduction in emissions from 2018 levels by 2030, fossil fuels still dominate its energy mix: 60% of electricity comes from coal and gas, while renewables make up just 9%, a quarter of the OECD average of 34%. Monopoly strangling transition At the heart of South Korea's climate failure is an energy model based on a state monopoly and central planning. Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco), the state-owned energy company, controls transmission, distribution and retail, while its subsidiaries dominate generation, creating structural challenges for competitors. These include Korea South-East Power, Korea Western Power and four other generation subsidiaries that together operate the vast majority of the country's coal, gas and nuclear power plants. Meanwhile, renewable energy developers face an obstacle course of regulatory barriers. Until recently, windfarm developers had to obtain 28 different permits from multiple ministries in a bureaucratic maze which created years of delays and significantly increased project costs, making many otherwise viable developments financially unfeasible. Progress was made in early 2025 with the passage of a long-awaited bill aimed at streamlining approvals, although the law won't take effect until 2026. Grid connection remains another hurdle. While electricity demand has grown by 98% over the past two decades, the transmission network has expanded by just 26%, but attempts to expand the grid have led to bitter local conflicts. In Miryang, South Gyeongsang province, the government tried to compel residents to sell up to clear space for transmission towers and people faced violent crackdowns during a six-year standoff. Currently, a dozen such projects are stalled in the country. In February 2025, the National Assembly passed a Power Grid Special Act aimed at expanding transmission. But civic groups warn the law reinforces the country's decades-old top-down model of infrastructure development, removing what few safeguards remained around public consultation and environmental review. 'We fully acknowledge that renewable energy transition requires transmission lines,' says Kim Jeong-jin from Friends of the Earth in Dangjin, where one project faced more than 10 years of delays due to local opposition. 'But the repeated conflicts arise because the electricity is not even for local use, yet it causes damage to our region without any regard for our voices.' The country's energy strategy is guided by the Basic Plan for Electricity Supply and Demand, a 15-year forecast revised every two years. But the framework, which dates back to the 1960s, still prioritises centralised, large-scale power generation – a model built for coal and nuclear, and fundamentally incompatible with today's decentralised, flexible renewable technologies. Political volatility worsens the problem. Each five-year presidential term brings a policy reversal. For instance, in 2017, President Moon Jae-in announced a nuclear phase-out; his successor, the now disgraced ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol, reversed course five years later. This whiplash undermines any long-term planning for renewables – a problem faced by democracies around the world. The consequences are stark. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent fossil fuel prices soaring, Kepco incurred enormous losses. In 2022 alone, South Korea faced an extra 22tn won (£11.9 bn) in LNG power costs. Yet the government kept electricity prices artificially low, a political choice that pushed Kepco's debt to a staggering 205tn won (£111bn) by 2024. Despite this crisis, meaningful reform remains elusive. This entrenched monopoly system has effectively blocked the clean energy transition, with independent renewable producers struggling to gain meaningful access to a market dominated by fossil fuel interests. Carbon-intensive by design More broadly, South Korea's postwar rise relied on energy-intensive industries: steel, petrochemicals, shipbuilding and semiconductors. 'This structural dependency on heavy and chemical industries makes the energy transition extraordinarily difficult,' says Park Sangin, a professor of economics at Seoul National University. 'These industries are deeply embedded in the country's economic fabric and require vast amounts of stable, cheap electricity.' Powerful chaebols, or family-controlled conglomerates like Posco, Samsung and Hyundai, exert outsized influence on national policy. Their operations are supported by an electricity market designed for industrial stability, not climate mitigation. And the problem isn't just domestic; South Korea also finances and provides the infrastructure for fossil fuels globally. South Korean shipbuilders dominate the global market for LNG carriers. Public financial institutions also bankroll overseas fossil fuel projects. One that was recently approved, the Coral Norte gas project in Mozambique, is projected to emit 489m tonnes of CO2 across its lifecycle. At the same time, South Korea has emerged as one of the world's top importers of Russian fossil fuels, even as other nations cut ties. 'This financing directly contradicts [South] Korea's climate targets and makes a mockery of the Paris Agreement,' says Dongjae Oh, the head of the gas team at Solutions for Our Climate (SFOC). 'It exposes the country's hypocrisy – adopting climate targets at home while funding climate destruction abroad.' Even climate-friendly institutions continue backing fossil fuels. The National Pension Service (NPS), one of the world's largest pension funds, remains a major investor in coal and gas projects, despite a 2021 'coal-free' declaration. Three and a half years after this announcement, NPS only finalised its coal divestment strategy in December 2024, with a timeline that will delay implementation for domestic assets until 2030. Meanwhile, South Korea's market-based climate policies have failed to drive meaningful change. The emissions trading scheme (K-ETS) was supposed to put a price on carbon when it launched in 2015. But the system, which hands out free allowances to the largest companies, has instead created perverse incentives, according to campaign group Plan 1.5. The group carried out an analysis and found that South Korea's 10 largest polluters have made over 475bn won (£258bn) from selling unused carbon credits between 2015 and 2022. The system that was meant to make polluters pay has instead rewarded them. Next generation fights back There is growing awareness of a climate crisis as the country begins to experience increasingly severe weather. In 2023 46 people died in floods that displaced thousands. More recently, torrential rains have again caused at least 26 deaths, followed by a record-breaking heatwave. In March this year devastating wildfires swept across more than 48,000 hectares (118,610 acres) – roughly 80% of the area of Seoul – killing 31 people and destroying thousands of homes. The country's disaster chief described the situation as 'a climate crisis unlike anything we've experienced before'. The prime minister, Kim Min-seok, has described the climate crisis as 'the new normal'. Now a new generation of South Koreans is challenging the status quo through legal action. In February, a group of children gathered outside Posco's office in Seoul. Among them was 11-year-old Yoohyun Kim, the youngest plaintiff in a groundbreaking lawsuit against Posco. The case aims to block the company's plan to reline an old coal-fired blast furnace, a move that would extend its life by 15 years and emit an estimated 137m tonnes of CO2. 'I came here during my precious winter break, my last as an elementary school student, because I want to protect all four seasons,' Yoohyun told supporters. 'Spring and autumn are disappearing with climate change – and with them, the chance for children like me to play freely outside.' The lawsuit is the first of its kind globally to target traditional blast furnace production. It follows a crucial ruling by South Korea's constitutional court last August which found that the government's climate policies violated the rights of future generations by failing to set legally binding targets for 2031-50. In March, residents and activists filed another suit over the government's approval of the world's largest semiconductor cluster in Yongin, backed by a 360tn won (£195bn) Samsung investment. The suit argues that the project's 10GW electricity demand and new LNG plants contradict climate regulations and corporate sustainability commitments. Kim Jeongduk, an activist from Political Mamas who participated in protests against the Samcheok Blue plant with her child, sees this as a generational struggle. 'Growing up in Pohang, I saw smokestacks fill the sky on my way to school every day. My throat would hurt from fine dust, and iron particles would collect on our windowsills,' she recalls. 'Adults always said: 'Thanks to Posco, our region survives.' I don't want my child to grow up with that same false choice between a healthy environment and economic survival.' The international data shows that South Korea's emissions peaked in 2018, and have been falling, with a brief jump after Covid, ever since. The government maintains that it is making progress on its climate goals, although critics argue that it is relying on some wonky calculations around its 2030 emission reduction target, confusing net with gross emissions. 'South Korea is actively pursuing bold reduction of coal power generation through prohibiting new permits for coal power plants and phasing out ageing facilities,' the ministry said in a statement, arguing that any remaining coal plants operating beyond 2050, such as those approved before the 2021 ban, would be addressed through 'carbon capture and storage technology and clean fuel conversion' in a way 'not inconsistent with our carbon neutrality commitment'. But independent analysis suggests these measures fall well short. 'The Basic Plan has no specific plan for how to expand renewable energy,' says Prof Park. 'There are vague targets, but no timeline, no locations. In stark contrast, the nuclear roadmap is extremely detailed and specific.' His recent research using the Global Change Assessment Model shows the current plan would fall short of meeting South Korea's 2030 emissions targets by approximately 6-7%. A more ambitious policy focused on offshore wind expansion and a complete phase-out of coal by 2035 could not only meet climate goals but reduce power sector emissions by 82% by 2035. When confronted with criticisms of its emissions accounting, South Korea's environment ministry defended its approach: 'Our emissions reduction target calculation method considers international regulations and major country cases. Countries like Japan and Canada use similar calculation methods for their 2030 NDCs,' a spokesperson said. The ministry added that although previous targets used the older 1996 IPCC guidelines, from 2024 they have begun using the updated 2006 standards for national greenhouse gas statistics. Back in Samcheok, Eunbin Kang looks out at the coal plant that now dominates the coastal landscape. 'I dream of a society where exploitation and plunder are replaced by decentralisation and autonomy,' she says. 'I want to contribute to spreading lifestyles and policies that allow everyone to lead a good life without requiring a lot of electricity or money.'
The Review Geek
5 hours ago
- The Review Geek
The Nice Guy – K-drama Episode 9 Recap & Review
Episode 9 Episode 9 of The Nice Guy begins with Seok-kyung finally coming back home. She wakes up the entire house, with Seok-hee, her mother, and her son rushing to greet her. Her father is as angry as ever but stops short of 'breaking her legs,' since her son is watching. In the end, Seok-kyung's father accepts her homecoming, even though he refuses to speak to her. The next day, Seok-cheol learns about his sister's return and goes to meet her after dropping Mi-young off from their overnight date trip. Meanwhile, Tae-hoon has someone spying on Seok-cheol, convinced that an attack against him is coming from Seok-cheol's side. Still, he harbors doubts about the intel suggesting Seok-cheol would try to kill him. At the same time, Seok-kyung finally attends her son's Parent's Day event at school, with Byeong-soo accompanying her. Later, as Seok-cheol gets his car washed, Tae-hoon's men trail him and ask for permission to strike him in this vulnerable state. Something doesn't feel right to Tae-hoon, though. Remembering that Seok-cheol had been the only one by his side when his sister passed, he holds back and refuses to give the go-ahead. From there, Seok-cheol heads straight to his office to finally hand in his resignation letter, despite his senior warning him of a potential retaliatory attack. Around the same time, Tae-hoon invites Seok-cheol for a meal and learns that he has resigned. After Seok-cheol leaves, Tae-hoon orders his men to launch an attack on Seok-cheol's gang, now that he isn't with them. Their attempt backfires comically when Byeong-soo happens to be in the area, thwarting their efforts for the time being. Meanwhile, Mi-young discovers that her mother has been moved to a single room, only to realize Tae-hoon was behind it, something that doesn't sit well with her. Elsewhere, Ki-hong is ecstatic after being promoted to associate professor at the hospital, but Seok-hee has her own dreams of studying abroad. When she returns home to share the news, she finds herself caught in the middle of the family's housing fiasco. Watching her father look for smaller apartments leaves her feeling suffocated and deeply empathetic toward him. On another front, gang boss Chang-soo meets Seok-cheol privately. It was revealed earlier that he is suffering from an illness, and now he expresses his desire to pass the gang's leadership on to Seok-cheol. Unfortunately, Seok-cheol's cunning senior , also hungry for power, overhears the conversation, leaving the episode on a tense cliffhanger. The Episode Review The Nice Guy Episode 9 balances warmth and tension, even if the storyline itself feels somewhat predictable. Seok-kyung's homecoming marks more than just a return, it symbolizes the possibility of a new beginning, a break away from her destructive past and bad habits. Her father's silent acceptance, though rough around the edges, adds an emotional layer to her arc. Tae-hoon's character, too, feels more grounded now. His choice not to attack Seok-cheol highlights the lingering bond between them, rooted in their shared past. It also reflects his ability to see the good in Seok-cheol despite the risks. Yet, Tae-hoon's dilemma remains unresolved. Does he truly feel a brotherhood with Seok-cheol, or is he still plagued by doubts about his loyalty? And his growing closeness to Mi-young raises further questions. Is he genuinely trying to protect her, perhaps making up for the sister he couldn't save, or does he harbor ulterior motives? Then there's the thing with Seok-hee trying to assert herself and her choices, emerging as a very identifiable feminist figure in the show. She's possibly one of the most endearing and likeable characters, someone whose story feels worth telling in its own right, beyond the family drama that surrounds her. The episode leaves us reflecting on these uncertainties while building up intrigue for the gang's succession battle. The tension between Seok-cheol's integrity, Tae-hoon's mistrust, and the looming threat of betrayal makes for an engaging setup heading into the next chapter. Previous Episode Next Episode Expect A Full Season Write-Up When This Season Concludes!
Times
6 hours ago
- Times
Meet the barrister fighting to clear Lucy Letby's name
When Mark McDonald answered the phone, almost exactly a year ago, he had no idea he was about to step into the heart of one of the most high-profile cases in British legal history. The call was from Lucy Letby's parents and they wanted his help. 'A week later, I'm meeting Lucy,' McDonald recalls. Letby's family wanted him to take over from her previous lawyer, Ben Myers, and free her from prison, where she is serving 15 whole-life terms. At the end of her ten-month trial in 2023 (one of the longest in British legal history) she was convicted of seven counts of murder and six of attempted murder at the Countess of Chester Hospital in Cheshire between 2015 and 2016. A further trial last year added one more conviction on a count of attempted murder. McDonald was Letby's last hope. 'I get the phone call when it's all gone wrong,' says McDonald, 59, a seasoned criminal defence barrister with a reputation for high-profile appeals. McDonald is in Devon on a family holiday, so we speak over Zoom. His two children, aged three and four, have spent all day building sandcastles and eating ice cream. But work never stops when it comes to McDonald's most high-profile client. McDonald speaks to Letby, 35, once a week or every two weeks — sometimes more often — and visits her once a month at Bronzefield prison in Ashford, Surrey. He says Letby is 'in a very different place today than what she was 12 months ago'. 'Remember, 12 months ago, she'd lost every argument. She had been saying that she was not guilty right from the beginning and nobody believed her. She went through a whole trial and she was convicted. She went to the Court of Appeal and she was convicted. She had a retrial; she was convicted. She went to the Court of Appeal again; she was convicted. And that was it. There, you have a broken person. But today, after everything that has happened in the last 12 months, she's got new hope.' At least some of that is thanks to McDonald. Back in 2023, under photos of her dead-eyed mugshot Letby was universally branded the blonde-haired, blue-eyed 'angel of death' who was 'evil' and 'a monster'. Slowly at first and then all at once, the public debate over the veracity of her conviction became more heated. In the past 12 months McDonald has done everything he can to transform what was initially a tiny ripple of outlier conspiracy theorists decrying the nurse's guilt into overt support ranging from celebrities and newspaper columnists to scientists and some MPs. But he still has a way to go. For Letby to be allowed to appeal against her conviction, McDonald must first submit 'new evidence' to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), an independent public body that assesses potential miscarriages of justice. To this end he has assembled a 14-strong independent panel of international neonatal and paediatric experts with whom he shared the babies' medical notes. In February, McDonald called a press conference in which they cast a shadow of doubt upon the prosecution's expert medical case. It caused a media storm. McDonald and his panel claimed to have assembled evidence to refute the sky-high insulin levels found in some of the babies ('the [insulin] test was not fit to be used as forensic evidence,' he says); the rota showing Letby was on duty (he says it 'doesn't stack up with statisticians'); and highlighted inconsistencies in the testimony of Dr Ravi Jayaram, who had claimed during the trial to have seen Letby standing over a baby with a dislodged breathing tube. The parents of some of the victims say McDonald's 'publicity stunt' is 'distressing' and that they 'already have the truth'. A BBC Panorama documentary last week raised concerns about McDonald's case. The documentary suggested there was a lack of consensus among the experts. In the case of Baby O, one expert, Dr Richard Taylor, claimed in a December 2024 press conference that the baby's liver was pierced with a needle by another doctor. However, another expert on the panel, Professor Neena Modi, claims the baby's liver injuries may have been caused by a traumatic birth. The Thirlwall public inquiry was told Baby O was delivered by caesarean section and their medical records had no reference to any difficulties or trauma. A defiant McDonald says the most recent documentary, by Judith Moritz and Jonathan Coffey, was 'a shambles' and he 'felt that much of it was wrong, misquoted' and 'poorly put together'. Moritz was one of the few reporters given access to the whole Letby trial at Manchester crown court and The Times's review called the documentary 'impressive' and 'a rigorous look at the evidence'. However, what the panel do agree on is that Lucy Letby is innocent. Heading the panel is the Canadian neonatologist Dr Shoo Lee, whose research paper on air embolisms in babies was referenced at Letby's trial. He says his research was misinterpreted and should never have been used. But the Court of Appeal dismissed his argument as 'irrelevant and inadmissible' because the babies had never been diagnosed like he claimed. McDonald takes issue with the prosecution using the medical expert Dewi Evans — an expert paediatrician and former clinical director for paediatrics and neonatology — who he says 'has been retired for 14 years and wasn't even a neonatologist' — to convict Letby, but hasn't he done the same, cherry-picking his medical experts to counter Evans's opinion? Many of the experts on his panel asked to see the medical notes under the condition that they could say publicly if they thought Letby was guilty, but all were in concurrence — no crime had been committed; Letby was innocent. Were there any experts who received the babies' medical notes and were not prepared to join the panel? 'No,' McDonald says. He is also backed by the MP Sir David Davis and the former health secretary Sir Jeremy Hunt, who has said her case must be 'urgently re-examined'. McDonald is so certain 'no crime has been committed' that he is working free. Although he has other (paid) work, he estimates he has spent thousands of hours on Letby's case. 'I can't tell you, every day I work on it,' he says. 'I'm on holiday in Devon and I'm working on it. I had a telephone conference with Lucy yesterday. I won't stop. I will not stop until she is out.' McDonald says he can relate to the pressure of working in a hospital — it's where he started. He grew up in Birmingham and left school with no qualifications, becoming a general porter in a hospital aged 16, before becoming a plaster of Paris technician a couple of years later. Then he moved to the operating theatre as an assistant, and went to night school to study for A-levels that would lead him to study law at the University of Westminster. 'While I was at university studying law I continued to work all the time in the operating theatre. The last day of me working in the operating theatre was the day before my pupillage started as a barrister.' He has worked with 'many intensive care nurses in my time' and 'assisted in operating on neonates, paediatrics and intubation — the whole lot'. McDonald says he would have liked to have been Letby's lawyer from the start, and that 'I knew when she was arrested, I could write how this case would play out because I'd seen it before. I knew what was going to happen.' Letby is not the first killer nurse McDonald has represented. He has launched appeals for Ben Geen, who in 2003 and 2004 was convicted of murdering two patients and committing grievous bodily harm against another 15 after he was found to be administering drugs so he could resuscitate the patients at Horton General Hospital in Banbury, Oxfordshire. Geen's appeals have failed. I ask McDonald if he tends to see the best in people. 'Oh yeah,' he says as he runs a hand through his hair. 'I'm not naive; I'm a criminal defence barrister — I've represented many people over the years who are guilty. But I'm also able to see very clearly where this has gone wrong. There's no forensic evidence. There's no CCTV. There's no eyewitness evidence. There's just a theory by a man called Dewi Evans.' The barrister's approach is not for everyone. McDonald doesn't deny he is a publicity seeker. He says when it comes to changing the public narrative in cases of miscarriages of justice, boosting the media profile is 'very important'. He says in such cases cases it is often 'important to win the public narrative' before winning 'the legal narrative, because the Court of Appeal will know that the country is going to be looking at them'. McDonald says when, not if, Letby's case goes back to the Court of Appeal, 'they're going to have to take notice of what's being said. The Court of Appeal will know that the country is going to be looking at them.' Although McDonald is a master of public relations, he can be prone to exaggeration. 'If there was a poll tomorrow — obviously I haven't done a poll — but I would say that 50 per cent of the country would say that she needs to have a retrial because something's gone wrong, 40 per cent would say she's innocent and 10 per cent would say that we think she's guilty. I think it's that high.' He says his family and friends have been supportive of his work with Letby, 'because, look, I'm right!' He catches himself, 'God, that sounds very arrogant, I don't mean it to, but I am. And that's not because I say I am, but because every international expert that's looked at this says I'm right.' There is no time frame by which the CCRC must decide on whether to refer the case but McDonald expects it to be around the new year. He says in his 26 years of being a barrister he has never submitted so much evidence to the CCRC and that 'there'd be public outrage' if it is not referred. He says: 'If this is not referred back to the Court of Appeal then one has to question the purpose of the CCRC.' He says there is 'no plan B'. McDonald plans to do more paperwork on the case on holiday. He is talking to Letby again on Monday. What's driving him, he says, is that 'there's an innocent woman in prison that's been sentenced to the rest of her life to die in prison. And potentially I can get her out. It's not 'why am I doing it?' but 'why wouldn't I do it?''
