Magistrate Douglas Yau, whose earlier verdict favoring the defendants was overturned by a higher court in December last year, found the unlicensed Citizen's Radio and five defendants guilty of illegal broadcasting and fined them HK$42,000 (about US$5,420).

In the ruling, Yau said that the defendants' intention to fight for open airwaves through civil disobedience was "noble" and that their crime does not constitute a serious moral violation warranting imprisonment, local media reported.

But the defendants said after the ruling that they will neither pay the fine nor stop broadcasting.

"The fine was heavy. We had thought it would be around HK$100 to HK$200," said one of them, pro-democracy camp figure Tsang Kin-shing.

"We will not pay the fine. We would rather be put in prison," he added.

In a hearing in January last year, Yau had found the Telecommunications Ordinance, which regulates public airwaves, to be unconstitutional. The government then filed for an appeal.

A three-judge panel in the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial of the case with the scope limited to whether the operator broke the law or not, rather than considering the constitutionality of the law.

Citizen's Radio has been broadcasting an hour-long program on weeknights, using the FM 102.8 frequency that is currently not used by existing radio stations. It mainly focuses on political issues.

The station began broadcasting in 2005 but its studio was raided by police and the public broadcast regulator in August 2006. Its application for a radio license was later that same year rejected without explanation.

Hong Kong has four licensed radio stations: government-funded Radio Television Hong Kong, privately run Commercial Radio and Metro Radio, and the yet-to-operate Wave Media, whose license was approved last year to run an AM radio channel.