Media tycoon Jimmy Lai has been arrested while in detention in Stanley Prison, for aiding the escape of one of 12 Hongkongers captured en route to Taiwan by Chinese coast guard.

Lai, founder of Apple Daily’s publisher Next Digital, was arrested on Tuesday night for “conspiracy to assist offenders” and, under Hong Kong’s national security law, “conspiracy to collude with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security.”

The erstwhile fugitive whom Lai, 73, is said to have assisted is understood to be Andy Li, who is serving a jail term in the Chinese city of Shenzhen for illegally crossing the boundary between Hong Kong and mainland China. Li was trying to flee Hong Kong after being arrested for foreign collusion under the national security law.

Lai, meanwhile, remains locked up in the maximum-security Stanley Prison awaiting trial for fraud and colluding with foreign forces. He was briefly granted bail in December, but the city’s highest court overturned the decision just a week later. Lai is due to appear in court on Thursday to pursue another bail application.

In connection with Lai’s latest charges, legal assistant Chan Tse-wah, 29, was brought to court on Wednesday for allegedly colluding with Lai to help Li flee “without lawful authority or reasonable excuse and with intent to impede his apprehension or prosecution.”

Chan is also said to have colluded with Lai, Li, Lai’s aide Mark Simon and others between July 2020 and February 2021 in requesting “a foreign country or an external institution, organization or individual to impose sanctions or blockade, or engage in other hostile activities against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region or the People’s Republic of China.”

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