China upholds verdict and death sentence in appeal of Canadian Robert Schellenberg

A Chinese court rejected Canadian Robert Lloyd Schellenberg’s appeal against a death sentence ruling late Monday.

The Higher People’s Court of Liaoning Province upheld Schellenberg’s death sentence and said in a statement it was appropriate and the lower court's procedures were legal.

With the court upholding the death penalty sentence, the next and final step in the Chinese legal process is a mandatory review by the Supreme People’s Court, a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada said Monday. While there’s no timeline for the issuance of a final verdict from the Supreme People’s Court, and the review process can last “an indeterminate amount of time,” typically it has taken between six and 12 months, the spokesperson added.

Schellenberg was sentenced to death in China on charges of drug trafficking in mid-January 2019. The sentence overturned an initial 15-year prison term issued in November 2018. Schellenberg was accused of being involved with an operation that sought to smuggle 222 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine from China and first tried in 2016.

Verdicts in the cases of Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig â€" both charged with espionage â€" are also expected to be reached later this week, with Spavor’s verdict anticipated as early as Tuesday evening.

Spavor, an entrepreneur, and Kovrig, a former diplomat, were both arrested in China nine days following the detention of Meng Wanzhou, a Huawei executive and the daughter of the company’s founder on Canadian soil. Meng was arrested at Vancouver’s airport in late 2018, on U.S. fraud charges related to trading with Iran.

Schellenberg’s death sentence came in an abrupt one-day retrial just a month after Meng’s arrest, on Jan. 14, 2019. While it took over two years for the initial prison-sentence verdict to be issued after the 2016 trial, the death penalty was imposed in a much shorter time, leading many to believe the Chinese government was attempting to pressure Canada to release Meng, and triggering serious concerns over due process.

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