A court in Hong Kong, China, on Monday sentenced 45 pro-democracy activists to prison sentences that ranged from two months to 10 years, in the city's largest national security case. 

The defendants were charged under the country's 2020 national security law, which critics have panned as targeting free speech and dissent. The law was passed in response to pro-democracy demonstrations that lasted months in Hong Kong in 2019.

Former University of Hong Kong law professor Benny Tai, 60, was given the longest sentence of 10 years in prison, though all the activists faced up to life imprisonment, NBC News reported. The other sentences maxed out at just under eight years.

Tai, and the other opposition politicians, academics, and activists, were charged with conspiracy to commit subversion. A total of 47 people were charged with the crime in 2021, but two were acquitted in May. Thirty-one of the other defendants pleaded guilty to the crime in hopes of receiving a lesser sentence, but 14 were convicted.

The national security case revolved around the defendants' roles in the city's unofficial primary in July of 2020. Many of the candidates had claimed they would continually veto the city's proposed budget in order to force the resignation of its then-leader Carrie Lam. 

Attorneys for the defendants argued that the primary did not violate the national security law, but the judges in the case ruled that the plan to veto the budget would have created a constitutional crisis.

Misty Severi is an evening news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.