World
Q&A: Sebastien Lai on father Jimmy Lai’s Hong Kong ‘show trial’
Taipei, Taiwan – The national security trial of Jimmy Lai, the jailed 75-year-old media mogul and founder of the now defunct Apple Daily newspaper, was supposed to start next month.
But it has now been delayed – again – until December 18.
Lai has been in custody since December 2020 and faces multiple charges related to Hong Kong’s democracy movement and protests.
Lai has already been sentenced to more than five and half years over a commercial lease at Apple Daily, and faces additional charges under the national security law (NSL) and sedition law, which dates from colonial times.
Lai was also denied his choice of lawyer – veteran British barrister Timothy Owen – for the NSL trial, which will be heard before a panel of three judges approved by Beijing.
Sebastien Lai, the tycoon’s 28-year-old son spoke to Al Jazeera in Taipei about his father’s situation and his hopes for the future.
Al Jazeera: What are your expectations for the upcoming trial?
Sebastien Lai: I’m optimistic, in a sense. Obviously, this is a show trial. There’s actually no basis for national security convictions. There’s no basis for anything that they can convict on up to now, and he’s been in jail for three years. But my expectation is that it’s an opportunity to see if Hong Kong and the Hong Kong government are people of their word, because at the end of the day, what was happening is very obvious to the free world.
They’re basically punishing a publisher, a 75-year-old man, for standing up for the freedoms that the Hong Kong state has and that were also promised during the handover. That’s all it is really and they’re using a national security law, and the national security law isn’t retroactive. That’s something that they’ve stated very clearly – once it was in place, from that point is what counts. So if we look at it even just on that very level, on their word, then none of these guys should be in jail.
I think there’s a reason why they keep delaying the trial. There’s a belief that if you’re delaying it, it means that you don’t have a very strong case. And also, more importantly, they are really trying to get it under everybody’s radar – that’s why they’re doing it during Christmas. That’s my conclusion on my part, but it makes sense.
Al Jazeera: How do you feel about the government’s decision to block your father’s choice of a British lawyer for his national security trial?
Lai: I have no contact with the Hong Kong legal team. My contact is with the international legal team, and they’re independent of one another. And with the lawyer they provide… it goes to show where the Hong Kong legal system is now. But more importantly, I think it’s just a symptom of a much greater disease, of a much greater decay of the whole legal system.
You can see that in dad getting 12 months for lighting a candle at a Tiananmen Square vigil, how recently he was acquitted for organising a protest that 1.7 million showed up at, but he had already carried out the sentence.
Either way, I think the greater point is he served more than 10 months more than a year (referring to the time his father had already spent in prison) for participating in a protest with 1.7 million people, and on another level 1.7 million went out and protested [against] the government. I think what’s happening with the foreign lawyer is unfortunate but it’s more of a sense of where the Hong Kong legal system is going.
Al Jazeera: What can other countries like the United Kingdom do?
Lai: The UK has a responsibility to its citizens. My father is a citizen… they have a responsibility to their citizens, especially when they are being unjustly treated abroad. And there’s also an element of Hong Kong has essentially broken its promise to the UK about 50 years of handover, so there’s also that. The UK has to hold Hong Kong accountable, or at least call Hong Kong out that they are willing to break the pacts they have with other nations on a whim.
Hong Kong is trying to tell the world that they are open for business and they want to be part of the world again, and it’s important to realise that Hong Kong’s main benefit is it’s a place where it’s very close to China but it had the rule of law and a very free government system. It used to be a model of freedom and Hong Kong is still trying to tell the world that they have that, but they can’t do that if they have someone like my dad in jail. They can’t say they have free press and send 500 people to raid a newspaper. You have to choose one or the other. I don’t think you can treat the world like they’re stupid.
Hong Kong can either show the world that ‘we still want to be a part of the world economy’, ‘we still want to be open for business’ or they can keep doing this folly, which is basically cruel. My father, and the other political prisoners, they’ve already slandered their names and put them in jail. Dad’s been in jail for three years and at 75 that’s a long time. And so I think at this point it’s just cruel.
I hope that the UK puts my dad’s case forward every time they negotiate with Hong Kong, they are vocal about this and tell China and Hong Kong that this is unacceptable behaviour and that it’s not acceptable for China and Hong Kong to step on the freedoms that the UK has, or the free world has.
Al Jazeera: How’s your father doing in prison?
Lai: Unfortunately I haven’t seen him in more than three years since I left in 2020. I recently saw photos of him. I think he’s a strong man and I know that he is mentally tough, I know that obviously knowing you’re doing the right thing is a great source of strength, his religion is a great source of strength, but at his age he is the oldest political prisoner in Hong Kong unless they try to arrest someone else.
Al Jazeera: Are you close with him? People have challenging relationships with their fathers sometimes.
Lai: I was very fortunate, I was incredibly lucky because by the time that I was born, dad was already a bit older. So I’m 28, he’s 75. He was 47 when I was born, so obviously he was still very busy but we got to spend a lot of time together growing up. I think at the end of the day, he’s obviously someone I look up to greatly because of his actions [and] because of his willingness to stand by his word.
I saw videos from the BBC that they showed me from the archives and it was him before the handover. These English guys were interviewing him, and the crazy thing is this is like 30 years ago and when they ask him, ‘What are they going to do? Are they going to come after you?’ And he tears up and says, ‘Hong Kong is my home, it’s given me everything, so I’ll protect it’. And that was 30 years ago. It’s mind-blowing.
Al Jazeera: How would you describe the Hong Kong of today compared with the one where you grew up?
Lai: I think for a lot of people Hong Kong was always a very hopeful place. It had its issues but it was always a very hopeful place – a place where because of the institutions that were in place … where if someone was willing to work really hard they could have a successful outcome. But I think more importantly, it was one of the rare places in the world – a society of Chinese people that had freedoms besides universal suffrage. It was an experiment in that sense. It was always people leaving mainland China to come to Hong Kong and not Hong Kong to mainland China. So for me that was always a source of pride, the freedoms that we had, the hope that we had it’s what made Hong Kong so dynamic.
My impression of Hong Kong Kong now – and I haven’t been for three years – is that by and large that freedom is gone. It’s a place where the government has blurred the lines of the law so much that most people would rather stay clear of it. I think that element of not being scared of what you say or scared of what you do, I think that’s central to why Hong Kong was successful.
Al Jazeera: Where do you see Hong Kong in five years?
Lai: I think it depends on if the people running Hong Kong realise it’s true that these freedoms are one way to [stand out] because in the end, the government has to be accountable for what they say, they will be judged on their actions. I hope and I don’t know if that will be the case that Hong Kong will realise the cost of giving up these freedoms is too high and reinstate them. If that’s the case there is a possibility of it being a world city again. I think where it’s going though it’s probably going to be another mainland city, and it’s going to lose its competitive advantage, it’s no longer going to be able to compete with other cities in mainland China.
World
Trump threatens to bomb Iran unless they end nuclear weapons program and begin talks on new deal
JERUSALEM—President Donald Trump’s overtures via a letter to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to jump-start talks on dismantling Tehran’s illicit nuclear weapons program, were met with rejection by the theocratic state on Sunday, following Trump’s latest threat to the regime.
Trump told NBC on Saturday that “If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing,” he said. “But there’s a chance that if they don’t make a deal, that I will do secondary tariffs on them like I did four years ago.”
Trump added the U.S. and officials from the Islamic Republic are “talking.”
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Sunday “We don’t avoid talks; it’s the breach of promises that has caused issues for us so far,” according to the Associated Press. He added, “They must prove that they can build trust.” The White House did not immediately respond to Iran’s rejection of the talks, the AP reported.
Pezeshkian still noted that in Iran’s response to the letter that indirect negotiations with the Trump administration were still possible.
WALTZ TELLS IRAN TO GIVE UP NUCLEAR PROGRAM OR ‘THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES’
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei addresses the media during elections in Tehran, Iran, on May 10, 2024. (Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The apparent return of Iran’s regime to its standard playbook of opaque indirect talks between the U.S. and Tehran’s rulers raises questions about whether Trump would greenlight military strikes to eradicate Iran’s vast nuclear weapons program.
After Iran launched two massive missile and drone attacks on Israel last year, Trump could also aid the Jewish state in knocking out Iran’s nuclear weapons apparatus.
Indirect talks between the U.S. and the world’s worst state-sponsor of terrorism, according to Democratic and Republican administrations, have not compelled Iran to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Jason Brodsky, the policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), told Fox News Digital that the Iranians “do not want to provide President Trump with a casus belli to strike Iran’s nuclear program. There may be indirect and non-public responses through various intermediaries. I think some Iranian officials perceive a fissure among President Trump’s national security team on Iran. This explains Iran’s foreign minister’s comment in recent days that President Trump’s letter to the supreme leader poses challenges as well as opportunities.”
TRUMP VINDICATED AS EXPLOSIVE REPORT CONFIRMS IRAN SUPERVISES HOUTHI ‘POLITICAL AND MILITARY AFFAIRS’
Iran’s first functioning nuclear power plant in Bushehr, Iran, on April 28, 2024. (Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Brodsky said, “These Iranian officials seek to bypass experienced hands like President Trump’s national security advisor and secretary of state, who have been demanding the dismantlement of Iran’s entire nuclear program in keeping with President Trump’s long-standing and rightful position on this issue, and cultivate individuals around President Trump who do not have experience with Iran or are considered non-traditional conservatives who would be more receptive to their entrees.”
Trump promised that “bad things” would happen to Iran if the regime does not come to the table for nuclear negotiations. “My big preference is that we work it out with Iran, but if we don’t work it out, bad things are gonna happen to Iran,” he said on Friday.
Iran is enriching uranium to 60%, just shy of the 90% weapons-grade. Experts say it could have a nuclear weapon within weeks if it were to take the final steps to building one. Fox News Digital reported in late March that Iran’s regime has enriched enough uranium to manufacture six nuclear weapons, according to a U.N. atomic agency report.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian at U.N. headquarters in New York, Sept. 24, 2024. (Reuters/Caitlin Ochs)
Alireza Nader, an Iranian-American expert on Iran, told Fox News Digital, “Khamenei may be signaling that he’s not interested in negotiations, but his regime desperately needs economic relief. Otherwise, another popular uprising against him could start. Khamenei doesn’t have the cards.”
There is widespread discontent among Iranians against the rule of 85-year-old Khamenei.
TRUMP REINSTATES ‘MAXIMUM PRESSURE’ CAMPAIGN AGAINST IRAN
President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet at the White House, Feb. 4, 2025. (Reuters/Elizabeth Frantz)
Iran’s has upped the ante ever since Trump told FOX Business he sent a letter to Khamenei. Iran has disclosed video footage of its underground “missile city.”
Trump also told FOX Business, “I would rather negotiate a deal.”
He continued, “I’m not sure that everybody agrees with me, but we can make a deal that would be just as good as if you won militarily. But the time is happening now, the time is coming up.
“Something is going to happen one way or the other. I hope that Iran, and I’ve written them a letter, saying I hope you’re going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing for them.”
Brodsky said, “That means the Islamic Republic may dangle a JCPOA-like deal, with minor modifications from the previous 2015 agreement. Iranian media has been hyping such an arrangement.”
In 2018, Trump withdrew from the Obama-negotiated Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action deal because, he argued, that the agreement failed to ensure Iran would not build nuclear weapons and did not codify restrictions against Tehran’s missile program and sponsorship of Islamist terrorism.
IRAN’S LEADER WARNS US COULD RECEIVE ‘SEVERE SLAPS’ FOLLOWING TRUMP’S THREATS TO HOUTHIS
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies has analyzed where Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is located. (Image provided by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) )
Brodsky said, “These Iranian officials believe they can lure the Trump administration into this arrangement and then President Trump will wave a magic wand and bring the entire Republican Party along with Democrats to support the deal and make it more politically durable than the 2015 JCPOA. This is all despite President Trump’s consistent and strong record in rejecting the JCPOA framework. It reflects desperation in Tehran and a desire to buy time with another failed diplomatic gambit. But it’s important to have eyes wide open here as to the games the Iranians will (and are already) playing.”
While Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified on Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,” she did note that Iran increased its enriched uranium stockpile.
In sharp contrast to U.S. intelligence since 2003, Fox News Digital has previously reported that European intelligence agencies believe Iran is working toward testing an atomic weapon, and sought illicit technology for its nuclear weapons program.
Counter-proliferation experts, like the prominent physicist and nuclear specialist David Albright, have told Fox News that European intelligence institutions use an updated definition of construction of weapons of mass destruction to assess Iran’s progress in contrast to America’s alleged obsolete definition.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP
Fox News Digital sent press queries to the U.S. State Department and the National Security Council.
Fox News Digital’s Morgan Phillips and the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Donald Trump hints at exploring paths to a third term as United States president despite constitutional limits.
US President Donald Trump has said he is “not joking” about seeking a third term in office, which is barred by the United States Constitution.
Speaking in a phone interview with NBC News on Sunday, Trump directly addressed speculation over a potential third term, saying, “No, I’m not joking. I’m not joking,” but added, “It is far too early to think about it.”
“There are methods which you could do it, as you know,” he said, without elaborating on potential legal or political avenues.
The US Constitution’s 22nd Amendment limits presidents to two four-year terms, whether consecutive or not.
The 22nd Amendment says that “no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice”.
Trump was asked in the NBC interview about a scenario where his running mate, Vice President JD Vance, could assume office before stepping aside to allow him to take over. Trump acknowledged the possibility, stating, “That’s one” approach.
“But there are others, too,” he added, without elaborating further.
‘We’re working on it’
Overturning the 22nd Amendment would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the 50 US states.
Trump, who began his second, non-consecutive term in January, has repeatedly alluded to extending his time in office.
Some of his allies have also floated the idea of keeping him in power beyond 2028, while Trump himself has occasionally teased about the possibility, often in ways that taunt his political opponents.
If he were to pursue another term in the 2028 election, Trump, who was the oldest president to be inaugurated in the US in January 2025, would then be 82 years old.
The precedent of a two-term limit dates back to 1796, when George Washington voluntarily stepped down after two terms.
This tradition remained largely unchallenged for more than 140 years until Franklin D Roosevelt won a third term in 1940 amid the Great Depression and World War II. Roosevelt died months into his fourth term in 1945, prompting Congress to formalise term limits with the 22nd Amendment in 1951.
Longtime Trump adviser Steve Bannon suggested in a March 19 interview with NewsNation that Trump may seek re-election in 2028.
“We’re working on it,” Bannon said, adding that his team was exploring ways to reinterpret the definition of term limits to facilitate a third term.
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