This is John Batchel, a conversation with Mark Clifford, the author of the new book Troublemaker about Jimmy Lye, the billionaire entrepreneur and publisher of Apple Daily, jailed by the People's Republic of China, for demonstrating and with the rest of Hong Kong that they elect their freedom.

The trial, how long? What happens?

Mark speaks to it here.

Troublemaker is the book.

Jimmy Lye, 77 years old.

Not well.

And a brave man.

Here's Mark.

The trial itself, the hearing, is just about over uh then we do expect a month or so

until the summary arguments are made it's it's clearly a very complex case particularly since

there's no evidence jimmy's done anything other than practice journalism and speak up in favor of

freedom so the prosecution has a tough case, but the court does need

to find him guilty. Those are the instructions from Beijing, whether they're expressed explicitly

or implicitly, there's no question, but that he'll be found guilty. He is public number,

public enemy number one, the black hand, the puppet master, all the stuff that's

been thrown around about Jimmy. So then the court's going to have to decide and have to write up

some, some opinion, which will be public, trying to torture themselves into some pretzel of why

he's guilty. So that'll take another couple months. And then they'll have to consider how long he

should be sentenced. Minimum 10 years could be life imprisonment. He's in his late 70s. Even 10 years

is tantamount to life imprisonment.