HONG KONG - A Hong Kong court sentenced a man to three years in jail Monday for possessing firearms in connection with a plot to harm the city's leading pro-democracy campaigner Martin Lee.

Ho Wai-kam was sentenced by the High Court after he pleaded guilty to a charge of possessing a gun and ammunition without a licence, a spokeswoman for the judiciary told AFP.

Ho earlier admitted to having smuggled the weapons from Shenzhen to Hong Kong before passing them on to a mainland Chinese man, Huang Nanhua.

On Friday, Huang, also known as Wong Siu-ming, was imprisoned for 16 years after he was accused of plotting to shoot Lee and media mogul Jimmy Lai, both central figures pushing for democracy in the southern Chinese city.

Lee is a founding member of the city's Democratic Party and a top barrister. Lai is chairman of Next Media, which runs newspapers and magazines in Hong Kong and Taiwan that are strongly critical of China's ruling Communist Party.

Both Lee and Lai were also at the forefront of the campaign to commemorate the 1989 protests on Beijing's Tiananmen Square that were ended by a bloody military crackdown.

In sentencing Huang, who pleaded not guilty to a count of carrying arms and ammunition with intent to cause an arrestable offence, Judge Peter Line said he had no doubt that Lee was 'the object of his criminal attention'.

The judge added that the motive for the plot had to relate to Lee's politics or profession and that he had opted for a heavy sentence to reflect the gravity of the crime.

The plot was foiled after an officer stopped Huang by chance at a police checkpoint in August last year. He was found to have a homemade pistol and five rounds of ammunition in his bag.

The police also found Huang carrying papers with a photo and home address of Lai, details about restaurants where Lai and Lee had dined together, and even information about a traditional Chinese medicine doctor they had both seen.