HONG KONG –
Hong Kong’s High Court on Tuesday sentenced 45 pro-democracy activists to jail terms of up to 10 years in a landmark national security trial that has damaged the city’s once feisty democracy movement and drawn international condemnation.
A total of 47 pro-democracy activists were arrested and charged in 2021 with conspiracy to commit subversion under a Beijing-imposed national security law and had faced sentences of up to life in prison.
Benny Tai, a former legal scholar identified as an “organizer” of the activists, was sentenced to 10 years in jail, the longest sentence so far under the 2020 national security law.
