A Canadian sentenced to death in China has had his judgment overturned, coming amid a thaw in diplomatic relations between Ottawa and Beijing. British Columbia resident Robert Schellenberg, who faces drug smuggling charges, will now get a new trial.
Detained since 2014, Schellenberg was first given a 15-year prison sentence for drug trafficking charges, before being retried in 2019 and handed a death sentence.
Now, that judgment has been thrown out.
“I do not have visibility on the reasons that they undertake particular decisions,” said Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand when questioned by reporters about the Chinese court’s new ruling, during a visit to Nuuk, Greenland.
The minister did, however, confirm she has raised Schellenberg’s case with her Chinese counterparts several times.
“I am pleased with this development and I look forward to continuing to advocate for Canadian consular cases around the world,” Anand said.
The ruling comes just weeks after Prime Minister Mark Carney visited China to boost trade ties with Asia’s largest economy, and bolster diplomatic relations.
His visit to Beijing was the first by a sitting prime minister since 2017.
‘Exactly the kind of progress that we’ve been hoping for’
“This is exactly the kind of progress that we’ve been hoping for,” said former diplomat Michael Kovrig, who was detained in China for nearly three years.
“I think it’s always hard to know whether Canadian diplomacy contributed to it, but I think it is a credit to the Canadian government that it continues to quietly raise consular cases like Mr. Schellenberg’s,” Kovrig said in an interview with CTV News on Saturday.
Schellenberg’s 2019 retrial – which resulted in that death sentence – came just months after the arrest in Vancouver of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. arrest warrant.
That was followed by the detention of Michael Spavor and Kovrig on espionage charges, which Ottawa condemned as retaliation.
“I think he was instrumentalized in that. But of course, it’s not possible to prove that," said Kovrig.
“This, I think, can be taken as a positive signal that China now wants relations with Canada to move on to a smoother track,” he added.
Schellenberg has denied wrongdoing.
His case is now in the hands of the Supreme People’s Court, China’s highest judicial body, which struck down his death sentence.
