A ruling is expected on April 1 in the prosecution for unauthorized assembly against Jimmy Lai, Martin Lee and other senior Hong Kong pro-democracy figures, District Court Judge Amanda Jane Woodcock said on Monday.

Audrey Eu, the lawyer defending Lai, told the court in Monday’s session that the August 2019 protest march at the center of the case had gone smoothly amid the rain and the large crowd. Even if the defendants had mistakenly believed the march was legal, Eu said, the police did not issue a warning at the time, as if setting a trap.

Police authorization had been given for a rally at Victoria Park on August 18, 2019, but authorization was refused for participants to march beyond the park.

Eu said that a crowd dispersing from a rally was different from the definition of a “march”, and argued the prosecution had no way of proving that Lai had intended to organize or participate in an unauthorized assembly.

Eu also countered the accusation that the organizers had used a “spillover-style rally” as a cover for holding a march, saying that the dispersal arrangements had been publicly announced beforehand by the Civil Human Rights Front, the pro-democracy umbrella organization that oversaw the rally.

Eu said that standing at the front of a march is not the same as organizing it, pointing out that Lai was not a middleman for the CHRF and had not taken part in making preparations for the march. Instead, Eu contended, Lai had only walked alongside other pro-democracy lawmakers.

The prosecution argued that since the MTR had continued running as normal that day, the organizers had no excuse for leading rally participants on a walk to Central as a form of dispersal. Eu contended that the CHRF had explained that, if all participants crowded towards the Causeway Bay and Tin Hau MTR stations, the situation would become chaotic and trains might skip those two stations as a result.

Among the nine defendants in the case, Au Nok-hin and Leung Yiu-chung have pleaded guilty. The remaining seven defendants who proceeded to trial are Martin Lee, Jimmy Lai, Lee Cheuk-yan, Margaret Ng, “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung, Cyd Ho and Albert Ho. Each was charged with organizing an unauthorized assembly and knowingly taking part in an unauthorized assembly.

Closing submissions are due to conclude this week.

Click here for Chinese version

---------------------------------

Apple Daily’s all-new English Edition is now available on the mobile app: bit.ly/2yMMfQE

To download the latest version,

iOS: bit.ly/AD_iOS

Android: bit.ly/AD_android

Or search Appledaily in App Store or Google Play