Former media tycoon Jimmy Lai sentenced to 20 years in prison

Jimmy Lai leaves the Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal in Hong Kong in February 2021 (AP)

Jimmy Lai, the pro-democracy former Hong Kong media tycoon and a fierce critic of Beijing, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in one of the most prominent cases prosecuted under a China-imposed national security law that has virtually silenced the city’s dissent.

Judge Esther Toh said 18 years of the 78-year-old British national’s sentence should be served consecutively to his jail term in his fraud case, for which he received a jail term of five years and nine months. Lai can appeal his case.