Hong Kong police arrested five directors at the Apple Daily newspaper early on Thursday morning, including its editor-in-chief, local media reported, in the latest blow to the newspaper’s jailed owner Jimmy Lai.
Hong Kong Police’s National Security Department said in a statement that five directors of a company had been arrested on suspicion of collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security.
It said only that the five included four men and a woman aged between 47 and 63. It did not provide other details.
Apple Daily said five of its directors, including editor-in-chief Ryan Law, chief executive officer Cheung Kim-hung, Chief Operating Officer Chow Tat-kuen, Deputy Chief Editor Chan Puiman and Chief Executive Editor Cheung Chi-wai had all been arrested in morning raids.
The newspaper said at about 7.30am local time officers arrived at the newspaper’s headquarters and cordoned off the area.
The paper broadcast live footage of the police raid on its Facebook account. Officers could be seen cordoning off the complex and walking through the building.
“They arrived around 7am this morning, our building is besieged,” an unnamed reporter said in a live commentary with the broadcast. “Now we can see them moving boxes of materials onto their truck.”
“Police are restricting us from using quite a lot of our equipment. But we can still keep this live camera on and our website will keep updating,” the voice added.
Hong Kong police said 500 officers raided the newsroom after reports it had published were suspected to have breached the new national security law.
Police said the warrant was aimed at gathering evidence, including from reporters’ phones and computers, raising alarm about media freedoms.
Police said the tabloid published dozens of reports dating back to 2019 that may have breached the security law, without saying when the most recent articles in question were. The legislation is not retrospective but prosecutors can use actions from before its implementation as evidence.
Police have also frozen HK$18 million (£1.66 million) of assets owned by three companies linked to Apple Daily, senior superintendent Li Kwai-wah told reporters outside the paper’s headquarters.
The move is the latest blow to Apple Daily after authorities last month directed Lai’s shares in Next Digital, publisher of the newspaper, to be frozen.
Lai was arrested in August last year and later charged under the national security law imposed by China on its freest city. The pro-democracy activist’s assets were also frozen under the same law.
He has been in jail since December after being denied bail in a separate national security trial. He faces three charges under the new law, including collusion with a foreign country.
