Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai was sentenced to 14 months in prison while nine other activists received jail time or suspended sentences on Friday for taking part in unauthorized assemblies during mass pro-democracy protests in 2019.
Senior barrister Martin Lee, who helped launch the city's largest opposition Democratic Party in the 1990s and is often called the former British colony's "father of democracy," was given an 11-month suspended sentence.
It was the first time that Lai, one of Hong Kong's most prominent democratic activists, who has been in jail since December after being denied bail in a separate national security trial, received a prison sentence.
Lai was found guilty in two separate trials for unauthorized assemblies on Aug. 18 and Aug. 31, 2019, respectively.
He received a 15-month sentence for the first, reduced by three months in mitigation, and an eight-month sentence for the second, of which he will serve two.