Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai faces 12 months in prison for unauthorised assembly

[April 16, 2021]    HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai will serve 12 months in prison for taking part in an unauthorised assembly during the 2019 mass pro-democracy protests in the Chinese-ruled financial hub.

 Media mogul Jimmy Lai, founder of Apple Daily, leaves the Court of Final Appeal by prison van in Hong Kong, China February 9, 2021. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

Hong Kong's District Court Judge Amanda Woodcock gave Lai a 15-month sentence, reduced by three months in mitigation.

Martin Lee, who helped launch the city's largest opposition Democratic Party in the 1990s and is often called the former British colony's "father of democracy," was given a suspended sentence of 11 months in the same case.

(Reporting by James Pomfret; Writing by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Toby Chopra)

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