Swiss photographer found not guilty of aiding Hong Kong attack

A Swiss photographer, Marc Progin, was accused of aiding and abetting public disorder in an incident in Hong Kong in which an employee of JP Morgan was punched. Progin has now been cleared of the charges and has been proven not guilty in the court.

Progin was arrested after a video surfaced on the internet in which he could be seen closing the door leading to JP Morgan's regional headquarters a few moments before a masked man started beating up Lin Nan, the JP Morgan employee.

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The prosecutors argued that the photographer deliberately shut the door of the headquarters after an argument broke out between Lin Nan and a group of pro-democracy protestors in October 2019.

However, the defence lawyers argued that the 75-year-old photographer was simply doing his job and had closed the door to get a better angle of the photograph of the argument. The Magistrate hearing the case decided that there was a possibility Progin was simply doing his job and had shut the door "to take good pictures". He also pointed out a lack of evidence from the prosecutor's side.

When he stepped out of the court, Progin smiled and gave a 'thumbs up' to the media and said he was 'very happy' with the verdict, which has come almost a year after the video surfaced. If the Magistrate would have decided otherwise, Progin would have faced at least a year in the city jail.

However, Lin Nan had admitted that he was scared when the argument broke out and did not believe that the photographer had closed the door just to get a better picture. Progin, in his defense, had submitted the pictures clicked by him of the argument on that day. He also stated that being an adventurer and a photographer, when protests broke out in Hong Kong, he usually took his cameras and wandered on the streets to get good pictures and document the historic crisis in the city.