The death penalty against a Canadian convicted in China for drug trafficking, Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, was upheld on appeal today by a local court, in the midst of a serious diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Ottawa.
And Chinese justice is expected to announce its verdict tomorrow against another Canadian citizen, Michael Spavor, suspected of espionage. His arrest in China, shortly after that in Canada of a senior official of the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, had inflamed bilateral relations.
Schellenberg was sentenced to death in January 2019. The court accused him of smuggling, along with other defendants, more than 220 kilograms of methamphetamine. Already convicted in the past in Canada for drug trafficking, Schellenberg has pleaded innocent and claimed to have gone to China for tourism. He had appealed against the sentence. The People's High Court of the northeastern province of Liaoning, where he was on trial, "decided to dismiss the appeal and confirm the initial verdict," a statement read. "A plenary court was established" and "found that the facts established at first instance were clear, the evidence reliable and sufficient" and that the death penalty was therefore "appropriate", he said. The process ofSchellenberg's appeal took place in May 2019. It therefore took more than two years for Chinese justice to issue its verdict.