Jimmy Lai trial: Police officer denies persuading former Apple Daily publisher to testify against media mogul
Hong Kong Free Press
A police officer has denied persuading Cheung Kim-hung, the former publisher at Apple Daily, to testify against his former boss Jimmy Lai in Lai’s national security trial.
Per the defence’s request, the prosecution summoned an officer from the police National Security Department to the witness stand on Thursday. Lai Kwok-yung is the first of five officers involved in Lai’s case who are expected to testify.
The court heard that Lai had visited Cheung at the Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre, where the ex-publisher was detained, in November 2021. Cheung was arrested in June 2021 alongside Lai and other Apple Daily executives, who were charged with conspiring to collude with foreign forces.
He pleaded guilty and became a prosecution witness in the case, delivering his testimony over 12 days from late January to early February. The defence said a police record indicated that Lai spent hours with Cheung in an interview room on November 11, 2021, when the officer gave him a court document on why he had been denied bail the week before.
On Thursday, government prosecutor Crystal Chan asked Lai if he had asked Cheung to be a prosecution witness. Lai said he had not. He also said that his superior did not give him any instructions other than to hand the court document to Cheung.
Lai said he arrived at the detention centre at 10 am and spent around 30 minutes for registration and waiting for staff to prepare the interview room. Once he and Cheung sat down, Cheung took around 20 to 30 minutes to read the document, after which they sat in silence for 10 minutes. Lai said he asked Cheung if he was okay, and Cheung replied yes.
“Then I asked him again, ‘Are you really okay?’ He said he was ‘fine.’ Then I said something like, ‘Why don’t we just have a chat?’” Lai said, speaking in Cantonese.
The officer said they talked about Cheung’s life in the detention centre, including his exercise routine and visits from his girlfriend and a pastor. He ended the meeting with Cheung at around 2.45 pm.
“Then he told me, why don’t you come and visit me again tomorrow, because besides his girlfriend and the religious [leader]… he didn’t really have anyone else visiting him,” Lai said.
Defence barrister Steven Kwan then began questioning Lai. The officer confirmed with Kwan that some things he had just recounted – including how much time Cheung spent reading the document and their exchange where Lai asked him if he was all right – were not noted in his written testimony and police records.
It was during the meeting the next day, when Lai went to the detention facility with another police officer, that Cheung said he wanted to be a prosecution witness.
Kwan asked if their three-hour meeting the day before was so that Lai could persuade Cheung to be a prosecution witness. Lai denied it and said he was surprised when Cheung informed him of the decision.
During Cheung’s testimony, the ex-publisher also rejected the suggestion that police had asked him to be a prosecution witness.
Defence barred from recalling Cheung
The police officer’s testimony followed the judges’ rejection of a defence application to recall Cheung to the stand to testify for a second time.
The judges said they would not allow Lai’s team to summon Cheung again, with Susana D’Almada Remedios calling it “not in the interest of justice.”
The defence had applied to recall Cheung for additional questioning on the basis that it had now obtained records from messaging app Slack, which Apple Daily staff used to communicate matters relating to lunch meetings of senior executives.
Johnny Ho, one of Lai’s solicitors, told the court from the witness stand on Monday that the defence only accessed the records in late February, weeks after Cheung had finished testifying earlier that month. Ho said the team got the documents through Claire Lai, the media mogul’s daughter.
Remedios said on Thursday that the defence had “more than sufficient notice” about the existence of the meetings’ abstracts, which the court heard earlier were sent via Slack.
The prosecution has said that Lai used the meetings to instruct Apple Daily staff to drum up international support for the anti-extradition protests in 2019.
Thursday marked the 77th day of Lai’s national security trial, in which the media mogul has been charged with two counts of conspiring to collude with foreign forces and one count of conspiring to publish “seditious” materials.
The trial – which began in mid-December – was initially slated to take 80 days. But Lai’s barrister Robert Pang told the court last week he estimated the trial might be “going into early June,” citing plans to play 35 hours of an interview show hosted by the tycoon on Apple Daily as well as to summon police officers to testify.
The 76-year-old media mogul, who has been detained since December 2020, faces up to life in jail if convicted.
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