Jimmy Lai’s son accuses China of weaponising the law against his father after activist convicted

Jimmy Lai’s high-profile trial concluded on Monday as he was found guilty on sedition and collusion charges

The son of jailed Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai accused China of weaponising the law following a landmark verdict that could see his father imprisoned for life.

Sebastien Lai rubbished the evidence presented by Hong Kong's High Court on Monday, which found the 78-year-old British newspaper owner guilty of sedition and conspiracy to collude with foreign forces.

“It’s 800 pages of essentially nothing, which shows how the law has been weaponised against my father and shows how basically all these freedoms that we take for granted here have been made illegal in Hong Kong,” he told the BBC’s Today Programme.

Jimmy Lai, an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party, has spent five years detained in the former British colony since his arrest under draconian security laws imposed by China.

Sebastien Lai has long campaigned for his father’s release from detention in Hong Kong (AFP/Getty)

His “heartbroken” son on Monday called on the British government to do more to pressure Beijing for his release, warning that his father is elderly and in bad health.

“My father’s 78 now. At any moment, he could die. So the ball’s in our court in that sense,” Sebastien Lai said. “The onus is really on the prime Minister, Keir, to get him out, to be the factor that unlocks him and brings him home here to the UK with his family.”

Sebastien Lai told a press conference in London that he was "heartbroken" over his father's poor health, and said the controversial national security law (NSL) had been used to detain someone who "essentially said stuff that they didn't like".

"It's time to put action behind words and make my father's release a precondition to closer relationships with China," he said.

Lai’s detention has drawn outrage from rights groups and governments, including the UK, as Sir Keir Starmer lobbies for closer ties with China.

The prime minister did raise concerns with Chinese president Xi Jinping in November as Jimmy Lai testified in court.

Jimmy Lai, now 78, was arrested in August 2020 and has been detained ever since. His family warns of mounting health concerns (AFP via Getty Images)

Lai was accused of violating the NSL through his tabloid newspaper, Apple Daily, and for his role in the pro-democracy protests that swept Hong Kong in 2019. He denied all charges.

His son on Monday welcomed the foreign office’s renewed condemnation of a “politically motivated persecution”, but called for more to be done ahead of the prime minister’s scheduled visit to China in January.

“I think what makes this country great is that we stand up for our citizens, we stand up for their freedoms, and that is something that we will never trade for,” he told the BBC.

“I wish that he’d bring my father home with him,” he added. “We talk about normalisation of relationships, but how can we normalise relationships if they [China] can’t even put a 78-year-old man on a plane … who by all intents and purposes is in seriously bad health … if they can’t even do something so simple, how can we talk about closer relationships with them?”

Lai’s legal team has not decided whether to appeal the verdict. His lawyer on Monday said his client’s “spirit is okay”, adding that it would take time to review the judgement and declining to comment further.