HONG KONG - Hong Kong pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai was on Dec 15 found guilty on two counts of foreign collusion and of seditious publication, in one of the Chinese city’s highest-profile national security trials.

The founder of the now-shut Apple Daily newspaper has been behind bars since 2020, with his case widely criticised as an example of eroding political freedoms under the national security law Beijing imposed on Hong Kong following huge and sometimes violent pro-democracy protests in 2019.