SW News: A court in China-controlled Hong Kong has dismissed the request of Catholic philanthropist and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai challenging the government's decision not to allow a foreign lawyer for his trial. Lai, the owner and founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily, faces a series of criminal cases in court.

The 75-year-old media mogul and activist submitted a request last month for judicial review after the National Security Committee told the immigration head not to entertain any visa applications for Lai’s counsel Timothy Own who is based overseas. This was reported by the Hong Kong Free Press on May 19. High Court judge Jeremy Poon said that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s courts do not maintain any jurisdiction over the national security committee’s affairs as per the national security law, which is in place.

“The HKSAR courts, as courts of a local administrative region, are not vested with any role or power over such matters of the [central government],” said the judge in his verdict. “They [security committee and immigration authority] clearly fall outside the courts’ constitutional competence assigned to them under the constitutional order of the HKSAR”.

It was in 2022 that Lai tried to rope in Owen to fight his cases in court and the Court of First Instance had allowed the foreign attorney admission as counsel in October. But this incensed the Hong Kong authorities who then went to the Court of Appeal and Court of Final Appeal three times to prevent the lawyer from coming to Hong Kong. However, the move ended in a fiasco.

This prompted Chief Executive John Lee to seek Beijing’s intervention and the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC) passed a bill interpreting the security law in December 2022. Without directly mentioning that the NPCSC did not object to the arrival of the foreign attorney, it confirmed the power of the chief executive to do so.