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HONG KONG – A Chinese court on Tuesday upheld the death sentence of a Canadian convicted of drug trafficking, one of a series of court cases that sparked a diplomatic split between Beijing and Ottawa.
The Canadian, Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, was first sentenced to 15 years in prison for trafficking in methamphetamine. But in 2019, he was sentenced to death in a one-day retrial, a month after Canadian authorities arrested Meng Wanzhou, an executive at a Chinese telecommunications equipment company.
The court’s decision on Mr. Schellenberg’s appeal came as Ms. Meng’s case in Canada entered its final argument. She is fighting an extradition request from the United States for fraud.
The arrest of Ms. Meng, Huawei’s chief financial officer, has sharply increased tensions between Canada and China. Shortly after Ms Meng’s arrest, two Canadians – former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor – were detained in China on charges of espionage. They were tried in March and are awaiting verdicts.
Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Communist Party-owned Global Times newspaper, warned in 2018 that if Ms. Meng was extradited, “China’s revenge will be much worse than the detention of a Canadian.”
A lower court had ruled that Mr. Schellenberg had worked with others to smuggle 490 pounds of methamphetamine. Schellenberg’s lawyers had warned him that an appeal of his 2018 conviction could result in a more severe penalty.
Yet the speed of his retrial in 2019 stunned observers, human rights activists and legal experts who said the timing was sending a strong signal that his case was now a political affair.
The rejection of Mr. Schellenberg’s appeal on Tuesday had been seen as a virtual certainty. The High People’s Court in northeast China’s Liaoning Province said in a statement Tuesday that “the facts found at the first instance were clear, the evidence was reliable and sufficient, the conviction was correct, the sentence was correct. was appropriate and the trial proceedings were legal. “
His case will be reviewed by China’s highest court, the Supreme People’s Court, which is the standard procedure for death penalty cases.
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