By Jessie Pang, James Pomfret HONG KONG, November 20 (Reuters) -Hong Kong media tycoon and pro-democracy advocate Jimmy Lai, 76, testified in court for the first time on Wednesday in his landmark national security trial,

Scores of Hong Kong ’s leading pro-democracy activists, collectively known as the “Hong Kong 47,” have been handed prison terms in the city’s largest trial under the national security law.

Jimmy Lai, the pugnacious Hong Kong media tycoon whose now shuttered tabloid Apple Daily was a regular thorn in Beijing’s side, took the stand Wednesday in his own defense for the first time in a high stakes national security trial that could send him to prison for life.