Democracy advocate Jimmy Lai leaves the Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal in Hong Kong, on Feb. 9, 2021.

Kin Cheung/AP

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Kin Cheung/AP

Democracy advocate Jimmy Lai leaves the Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal in Hong Kong, on Feb. 9, 2021.

Kin Cheung/AP

HONG KONG — Lawyers for a jailed Hong Kong pro-democracy writer have requested for an pressing assembly with U.Ok. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a number one member of his worldwide authorized group stated Tuesday.

Jimmy Lai, the 75-year-old founding father of the now-defunct newspaper Apple Daily, was arrested in 2020 throughout a crackdown on town’s pro-democracy motion. He is preventing collusion expenses beneath a Beijing-imposed nationwide safety regulation and faces as much as life in jail if convicted.

Last month, the group referred to as for the U.Ok. authorities to take fast motion to safe Lai’s launch forward of his high-profile nationwide safety trial after he was sentenced to 5 years and 9 months in jail on fraud expenses linked to lease violations. The assembly request is the newest try from his authorized group to induce the British authorities to step into the case of Lai, who’s a twin Hong Kong and British citizen.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher, chief of the group, stated Lai’s son was in London this week to name on British officers to guard his father.

“He is being subjected to ‘lawfare’ – multiple prosecutions and lawsuits, all designed to silence and discredit him and send a clear message to others that they should not dare to criticize the Chinese or Hong Kong authorities,” she stated in an e-mail reply to The Associated Press.

British officers didn’t remark instantly on Tuesday.

Lai is accused of conspiring with others to name for an imposition of sanctions or blockade, or have interaction in hostile actions towards Hong Kong or China. He additionally faces a cost of collusion with international forces to hazard nationwide safety, and a separate sedition cost beneath a colonial-era regulation that’s more and more used to crush dissent.

His trial – initially slated to start final month – was postponed to September after the Hong Kong chief requested Beijing to make a ruling that might successfully block Lai from hiring a veteran British lawyer, Timothy Owen, to symbolize him.

Britain, together with different Western nations, has been important of China’s crackdown on political freedoms in Hong Kong, which was handed over from the U.Ok. to China in 1997 with a promise by Beijing to maintain Western-style liberties beneath a “one country, two systems” framework.