Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai receives rare court win

The Hong Kong High Court on Thursday granted former pro-democracy media publisher Jimmy Lai’s appeal to quash his 2022 fraud conviction, according to Channel News Asia. The conviction stemmed from a contractual dispute over the building lease agreement for his Apple Daily newspaper, which the government later forced to shut down. Lai, a Roman Catholic and a British citizen, was sentenced in 2022 to roughly five years in prison and fined about $256,000, according to Channel News Asia. But the appeal judges on Thursday ruled that Lai and a co-defendant had not misrepresented the terms of their lease, according to Channel News Asia.

But the small victory for Lai, age 78, came days after a court sentenced him to 20 years in prison for colluding with foreign forces and publishing seditious materials. The sentence was the harshest ever imposed under Hong Kong’s recent security law. Lai will remain locked up in Hong Kong’s Stanley Prison, where he has been held since proceedings against him began in 2020, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. He has reportedly been held in prolonged solitary confinement with no natural light, according to the commission.

Is there any hope for his release? Lai’s daughter Claire attended President Trump’s Tuesday State of the Union speech as a guest of U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Rep. Chris Smith. Her appearance highlighted America’s commitment to secure Lai’s freedom, Johnson said in a statement. Claire Lai told reporters later that evening that she was calling on the American government to help release her father, whose health was failing. A social media page run by Claire and her brother shared a senator’s post urging Trump to raise the issue at his planned April meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The British government in December 2025 demanded Lai’s release, since he is a British citizen.

Dig deeper: Read Erica Kwong’s story on Lai’s recent sentence.