China, Canadian sentenced to death: appeal rejected
Huawei, the financial director arrested on a US mandate: it is a diplomatic crisis
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August 11, 2021Canadian consultant Michael Spavor, whose detention in China is considered "arbitrary" by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for espionage.
Spavor was arrested in December 2018, in what is seen in Canada as retaliation for the arrest a few days earlier in Vancouver of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei.
The Canadian businessman was convicted of spying and spreading state secrets to other countries. The sentence was handed down by the court in Dandong, a city on the border with North Korea, where Spavor was put on trial behind closed doors last March.
His case and that of another Canadian citizen accused of espionage, former diplomat Michael Kovrig, also arrested in China in late 2018, had attracted international attention: their arrest came just days after their arrest in China. Canada, in Vancouver, of Huawei's financial director, Meng Wanzhou, at the request of the United States, which is asking for his extradition for violation of sanctions against Iran. Meng is on trial in Canada: his case has angered China and created strong diplomatic tensions with Canada.
The sentence handed down by the court in Dandong, on the border with North Korea, where Spavor was tried behind closed doors last March, comes in the aftermath of the death sentence for drug trafficking of another Canadian citizen, Robert Schellenberg, the whose appeal request was rejected by the High People's Court of the northeastern Chinese province of Liaoning.
Canadian Ambassador Dominic Barton was present in court in Dandong. Yesterday, after the Schelleberg sentencing, the Canadian diplomat had hinted at the connection between the case of Spavor and another Canadian citizen, Michael Kovrig, with that of Huawei's financial director, Meng Wanzhou.
Meng was arrested in Vancouver a few days before the two Canadians were arrested in China, at the request of the United States seeking extradition for violating Iran sanctions, and her trial in Canada has entered its final phase. "I don't think it's a coincidence that this is happening now as events unfold in Vancouver," the Canadian diplomat said yesterday.
The case of the "two Michael", Spavor and Kovrig, had contributed to strongly deteriorate relations between China and Canada, attracting international attention. Ottawa has always condemned the arrest of Kovrig and Spavor, speaking of "arbitrary detention" and "coercive diplomacy" by China, demanding their release and clemency for Schellenberg, whose case has been reopened, after a first sentence at age 15, based on new evidence a few weeks after Meng's arrest in Vancouver.