A Hong Kong court handed three Tiananmen vigil activists jail sentences of between five and seven years on Friday for national security crimes, following a trial that has drawn international condemnation. Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, Albert Ho, 74 and Chow Hang-tung, 41 have been behind bars since they were charged in 2021. Their sentences are expected to include time already served. The United Nations, rights groups and foreign governments have condemned their convictions under a national security law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong following sometimes-violent mass protests that swept the city in 2019. A court ruled in August that the activists had breached the Chinese constitution by calling for an "end to one-party dictatorship". Watch more'The world has let this happen': Wu'er Kaixi on Hong Kong's loss of freedoms Lee and Chow, who pleaded not guilty, were sentenced to seven years and seven years and three months respectively, AFP journalists in court heard. Ho, a former lawmaker who pleaded guilty in January, got five years and two months. The verdict read that although the case did not involve violence, and the defendants had not put forward a specific timetable to carry out an "end to one-party dictatorship", their offence was still of "a serious nature". Prosecutors had argued the primacy of the Communist ​Party was enshrined in Article 1 of the Chinese constitution. Defence submissions that the defendants genuinely believed they were acting within the law given Hong Kong's freedoms of speech were rejected by the judges.