Joshua Wong said "thank you" and waved to supporters in the public gallery, some of them in tears. Moments earlier, a Hong Kong judge had sentenced him to another 10 years in prison, two months before he was due to walk free.

Wong, 30, the student activist who became the best-known face of Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement, was jailed by the High Court on Thursday for conspiring to collude with foreign forces under the national security law Beijing imposed on the city in 2020.

He had been expected to leave prison in January 2027. Because the new term overlaps with only the last two months of his current one, Hong Kong Free Press reports he is now likely to stay behind bars until 2036, when he will be 40, unless he gets remission.

How the judge reached 10 years

Judge William Tam set a starting point of 13 years and cut three years because Wong pleaded guilty in September. He found the offence was of a "grave nature", which carries a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of life.

"The punishment must fit the gravity of the crime," the judge said, adding that the court needed "to express the community's abhorrence of the defendant's scheme", Al Jazeera reports.

Prosecutors said Wong conspired with self-exiled activist Nathan Law and others in 2020 to ask foreign countries to impose sanctions, blockades or other hostile acts against the governments of Hong Kong and mainland China. Wong and Law co-founded the now-disbanded party Demosisto and lobbied for laws such as the US Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. The judge called the pair the "ring-leaders" and "masterminds".

Years behind bars

Wong has been in custody since late 2020, first over an unauthorised protest outside police headquarters in 2019 and then as one of the "Hong Kong 47" opposition figures. In that case he received four years and eight months for conspiracy to commit subversion over an unofficial primary election.

His sentence follows that of media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who was jailed for 20 years in February on collusion charges.

'Cruel and unjust'

The US consulate in Hong Kong said it "strongly condemns" the sentence and called for Wong's "immediate release", noting he had been "unjustly imprisoned since December 2020". Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, called the sentence "cruel and unjust", while Amnesty International said it showed how the security law had become "a tool to punish dissent". Taiwan's China policy body condemned what it called "endless political persecution".

Hong Kong police, on the other hand, welcomed the sentence, saying it was "truly reflective of his offence".

Outside court, his friend and fellow former Scholarism member Tiffany Chin summed up the mood among supporters: "As his friends, we need time to process this."

Photos: Al Jazeera/AFP (Joshua Wong, 2020); LN9267 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0, Hong Kong High Court). Thumbnail design: HAMASTA MEDIA.