Former Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, ending a years-long legal battle that has come to define Beijing’s transformational crackdown on the once-freewheeling financial hub.

The 78-year-old self-made billionaire was among the highest-profile government critics charged since Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on the semi-autonomous southern city in 2020.

The sentence is the longest delivered under that law and means Lai will not be eligible for parole until he is in his late 90s.

It has galvanized international calls for the pro-democracy media mogul’s release, following a landmark trial that was closely watched by Western world leaders, including US President Donald Trump, who previously vowed to “get him out.”

Trump is expected to travel to China in the coming months to meet his counterpart Xi Jinping and many of Lai’s supporters will be lobbying him to raise the case.

Lai’s son Sebastien called the sentence draconian and “life-threatening” for his father.

Twenty years, it’s a farce. It’s essentially tantamount to a life sentence, or as Human Rights Watch calls it a death sentence, because in the conditions that my father is being kept in, I don’t know if he even has a tenth of that, his son said.

Trump is expected to travel to China in the coming months to meet his counterpart Xi Jinping and many of Lai’s supporters will be lobbying him to raise the case.

Lai’s son Sebastien called the sentence draconian and “life-threatening” for his father.

His daughter Claire described it as “heartbreakingly cruel.”

I have watched my father’s health deteriorate dramatically and the conditions he’s kept in go from bad to worse. If this sentence is carried out, he will die a martyr behind bars, she said.

Lai’s outspokenness over Hong Kong’s shrinking freedoms – including to top US officials – and his role as the founder of now-defunct Apple Daily, a fiercely pro-democracy tabloid newspaper, had long made him a thorn in Beijing’s side.

Both Beijing and Hong Kong’s government have repeatedly rejected international criticism of Lai’s prosecution and dismissed accusations that his jailing was politically motivated or an assault on press freedom.

Authorities have said Lai has received adequate medical attention in prison.

Source: CNN