A HONG KONG court delayed media mogul Jimmy Lai’s foreign collusion trial, as China mulls a local government request to bar overseas-based lawyers from representing defendants in national security cases.

The court will meet again on Dec 13 to discuss a timetable for Lai’s trial, which was originally scheduled to start on Thursday (Dec 1). 

The government sought the adjournment to prevent Lai’s UK lawyer from representing him during the trial. After failing to get the local courts to bar Timothy Owen, the city’s leader, John Lee, said on Monday he would ask Beijing to examine whether overseas lawyers should be allowed to take on national security cases under the law.

Lai, 75, faces a possible life sentence if he is convicted of colluding with foreign forces in a trial. Prosecutors allege that he sought international sanctions against Hong Kong and China through his pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily. 

The now-closed newspaper was one of the city’s most popular media outlets. It championed greater freedoms in the Asian financial centre before it was targeted by authorities, who arrested senior editors, froze its bank accounts and effectively forced it to shutter in 2021.

Lee said on Monday that the government currently has no way of ensuring overseas lawyers have no conflict of interest, or have not been coerced or compromised by foreign governments.

GET BT IN YOUR INBOX DAILY

Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox.

Sign UpVIEW ALL

This would be the first time the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) offers an interpretation of the national security law without public debate or a vote by Hong Kong’s elected legislature. 

The national security law, endorsed by President Xi Jinping and passed in 2020, punishes acts of secession, subversion, terrorism and “collusion with foreign and external forces”. It asserts broad powers to control sources of opposition, from democracy advocates to news agencies and overseas dissidents. 

Beijing may be considering identifying a group of designated lawyers to handle national security law trials, the South China Morning Post reported, citing an unidentified individual. 

The NPC is expected to meet again later this month. 

The US, UK and other Western nations have condemned the closure of Apple Daily and the security law, with President Joe Biden saying Beijing was using it to “suppress independent media and silence dissenting views”. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for Lai’s release after a separate conviction related to the activist’s participation in a pro-democracy rally.

This week marks the second year of Lai’s imprisonment on national security charges. During this time, he was sentenced to 20 months in jail for his role in unauthorised assemblies related to the 2019 protests in Hong Kong. He was also convicted of fraud. BLOOMBERG